Costco Organic Chicken Thighs For Raw Are Terrible!

[sandyshores]

Had been buying organic boneless chicken thighs at Whole foods for the raw diet (mixed with their organic liver and the Alnutrin w eggshells). My cats loved it. I was as costco yesterday and noticed they had organic chicken thighs for $3.99/pound (whole foods is $6.99/pound). So I picked up 6 pounds. They are just terrible and my cats won't eat but a couple licks of their food made with it. It is LOADED with fat. I cut off all the big pieces of fat but there is a lot of it lined in with the meat that you can't get out. It also looked so shredded in ragged pieces rather than nice thighs in two pieces you typical get when buying boneless thighs.

But figured it couldn't be that bad so ground it all up and 6 pounds ended up 4.5 pounds after cutting off all the fat I could. So I had some whole foods thighs left from my batch last month and used those to mix in. I immediately noticed the difference in the color of the Costco thighs and Whole foods thighs. Because of all the fat in the costco thighs, it made the ground mixture look more white, whereas the Whole Foods had a nice pink color and looked like thigh meat. So, still figuring it may be ok, I mixed in the whole foods 1 1/2 pounds with it to make 6 pound batch.

My cats don't like it at all. take a couple licks and that's it. Can't blame them I guess as it probably tastes more like fat than meat! So all that work and money down the drain as I'm going to toss it and go to whole foods today and get their meat to make another batch. I am really surprised as Costco for having such poor quality organic meat.

 

[Furballsmom]

Oh gosh, I'm sorry to hear!!

 

[lavishsqualor]

I can so sympathize with you, SandyShores. I can remember spending hours of time making food--grinding it, mixing it and bagging it only to have my cats do the SNIFF SNIFF SCRATCH SCRATCH thing and walk away. I learned that they were MUCH more discerning that I am and could recognize meat that was on sale really quick.

 

[sandyshores]

Yeah, I learned my lesson! After this experience Whole foods is the only place I'll go from now on. And they even have the organic liver too. The good news is that I went to the Costco website to get a customer service # to call and complain... not even thinking I could get a refund but just to voice my concern. Costco told me to bring my receipt and the packages (without the meat) for a return. I offered to bring the meat and they said definitely do not bring the meat as it has to be tossed and if I could toss it and just bring in the empty washed out packages. I live in Florida on a canal with lots of turtles an fish in the water so am going to toss a bit of meat in the canal every day until I get rid of it - would be a treat for the fish and turtles! At least some creature is getting use from it! But kudos to Costco for honoring their 100% satisfaction guarantee on things you buy there. Who would have thought you could return meat????

 

[Furballsmom]

Costco's pretty amazing in that regard

 

[LTS3]

Costco and Whole Foods likely use different suppliers. The suppliers in turn get their chicken from different farms. Those farms may give different feeds to their chickens and that may affect how the meat tastes and how much fat is on the meat, color of the meat etc. Processing plants may remove extra far before packaging up the chicken.

Cats may detect the subtle taste difference between chickens fron different sources. There's nothing wrong with the meat for Human consumption. Picky pets are another thing

That's great that Costco is giving a refund even if they didn't expect their meat to be used for pet food.

If Whole Foods ever changes suppliers for their chicken, you may run in the same problem again.