Source:  Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE.COM, 2/24/10

Legislators and consumers seek to turn up the heat on USDA over the amount of salt water that poultry processors are allowed to inject into poultry products, a practice derisively called "pumping up."

In a news conference in Washington Wednesday, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) hosted the news conference, along with Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of Center for Science in the Public Interest, and Bill Mattos, the president of the California Poultry Federation.

"I have long fought to ensure that all consumer product labels are fair and truthful. Unfortunately, since 2003, chicken injected with sodium additives has been allowed to be misleadingly labeled as '100 percent all-natural,'" Sen. Boxer said at the conference. "There is nothing 'all-natural' about chicken injected with sodium additives."

The consumer advocates' concern is that, when a sodium solution is injected, poultry meat's inherent health benefits are diminished. Injected poultry products have a sodium content that offers up to eight times more salt per serving than natural chicken that is not injected, an issue for consumers seeking to reduce the amount of salt in their diets.

Furthermore, Jacobson said, the addition of salt water amounts to a "hidden tax" of up to 15 percent on each purchase, exacted by "unscrupulous poultry producers," he said. "This isn't about 'enhancing' chicken, it's about enhancing profits."

Even Mattos, whose trade organization represents California's turkey and chicken producers and marketers, quoted a 2004 study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that characterized USDA's labeling guidelines as "ineffective at best, and misleading at worst."

The consumer advocates called on USDA to "immediately prevent sodium-injected chicken from using the 'natural' label," Sen. Boxer said, and require all poultry producers to identify added ingredients, such as salted water, in larger print than is now required.
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