Durban - Whether you sink your teeth into a piece of local or imported chicken, there’s a fairly good chance its level of quality would be acceptable, provided it was cooked at the right temperature.
But if you’re looking for the tastier option between imported and local chicken, it seems best to go for a local brand.
Those were some of the findings made during tests conducted on cooked and uncooked, local and imported chicken pieces, by experts the Sunday Tribune engaged this week.
Of the chicken pieces purchased from popular supermarkets, Rainbow Chicken proved to be the tastiest of the five products sampled.
However, the laboratory test produced one startling finding: E coli and the even more deadly E coli 0157 bacteria was found in locally produced pieces of “free range” chicken, from a certain supermarket chain store, which attached its brand name to the meat package.
Given all the latest rumblings in the poultry industry, this newspaper attempted to see how local products fared in terms of taste and quality against imports.
Bioscience Technologies, a laboratory that specialises in food analysis, was asked to check mainly the bacterial content of sampled pieces.
And a group of foodies, who assembled at Gecko Culinary Adventures’ premises, taste-tested the cooked version of meat tested in Bioscience Technologies’ laboratory.
Former Springbok and Sharks prop Etienne Fynn was handed the cooking duty and he used a Weber gas cooker to prepare the meat for the testers.
The growing trend of cheaper imported chicken flooding into the country and occupying more freezer space in supermarkets has had an adverse affect on the local poultry industry.
The price war has forced major local chicken producers to reduce productivity and retrench workers as a means to stay in business.
The other meat that was subjected to testing samples included imported Brazilian fillets, Irish Cornish and a bag of drumsticks from various European countries.
Bacteria
Sahistah Gaffoor, Bioscience Technologies’ technical manager, said the samples were subjected to a range of tests so that bacteria could be spotted more easily, and all bacteria were counted.
“The results showed there was not much difference in the bacterial count between the products and it is normal for chicken to have bacteria.
“But we found that one of our local free-range chicken samples had E coli and Ecoli 157, and that’s cause for concern,” Gaffoor said.
Ecoli can be killed off if the meat is cooked at the right temperature because it’s known to survive well in chilled and frozen food.
“The prevalence of Ecoli in food is not ideal because the bacteria could leave behind other harmful by-products.
“On the same local product, we found Ecoli 0157 bacteria, which can be deadly, especially for those people with compromised immune systems,” said Gaffoor.
At the Gecko Culinary Adventures, chef Fynn pointed out to the tasters and the Tribune crew that some meat portions were more “puffed up” than others before cooking.
The Brazilian fillets were the ones bearing the most mass.
Fynn suggested it might have a greater brine content, a water solution injected into meat, before freezing.
When preparing the meat for griddle, Fynn marinated it with some chicken rub olive oil. The chicken portions were placed on the Weber and left to cook for about 10 minutes.
Fynn lifted the Weber’s lid and was greeted by golden brown chicken pieces, as a delicious smell wafted through the air.
Then it was the turn of Independent Media food experts - Buhle Mbonambi (food and drinks editor), food writer Latoya Goldstone and food critic Frank Chemaly - to wrap their taste buds around the sampled meat.
Rainbow’s offerings got their unanimous seal of approval and the local free-range portions rated second best for the connoisseurs.
And the eagle-eyed Chemaly picked up on the watery substance that oozed from the thicker Brazilian fillet.
Food technologist Jeremy James said all international chicken brought into the country was much bigger than the local chicken because it had been injected with brine by the supplier.
James noted that the colour of the chicken was generally the same but there were instances when overseas chicken had a blueish-green colouring.
He said overseas chicken packages had to state the origin of the chicken and whether it was going to be sold frozen or had been frozen previously.
He didn’t believe there were any health benefit differences between “free range” and commercial chicken.
“The only difference is that the commercial chickens are kept in an enclosed space and given routine antibiotics, whereas the free range chicken are free to roam. “They only get treated when sick. Then they are left until all antibiotics have withdrawn from their systems. A check is done before they are sold.”
* Check out videos of the taste and lab test on Sunday Tribune’s Facebook page.