Jonathan Stempel
Feb 13 (Reuters) – Costco faces a new lawsuit over its grilled chicken after an animal rights nonprofit claimed the retailer’s chicken processing plant in Nebraska was contaminated with salmonella.
The proposed class action lawsuit filed Thursday cites a December study by Farm Forward that criticized safety conditions at Costco’s Lincoln Prime poultry plant, which opened in 2019 and can process more than 100 million chickens annually.
According to the complaint, the Fremont, Nebraska, plant “consistently” failed to meet USDA safety standards, with more than 9.8% of whole chickens and 15.4% of chicken parts testing positive for salmonella contamination.
Costco’s Kirkland Signature grilled chicken, which sells for $4.99, has long been viewed as a money-losing product to lure shoppers into the Issaquah, Wash.-based company’s warehouse stores.
Costco said at its annual meeting last month that global sales of roasted chickens will exceed 157 million by 2025.
“Costco’s failure to control salmonella in its chicken supply was not a harmless technical issue, it posed a real danger to consumers and violated their trust,” the complaint states.
Neither Costco nor the Lincoln plant immediately responded to requests for comment Friday. Lincoln was not the defendant.
Plaintiff Lisa Taylor of Afton, Mo., said in a lawsuit filed in federal court in Seattle that she typically buys one or two rotisserie chickens each month at Costco warehouses in the St. Louis area and believes she overpaid because Costco failed to disclose contamination risks.
She is seeking treble damages for shoppers who bought Kirkland Signature rotisserie chicken and raw chicken parts since Jan. 1, 2019, saying Costco violated Washington consumer protection laws and breached its implied promise that its chicken was safe to eat.
The case follows another proposed class action lawsuit filed last month in San Diego federal court, which said Costco falsely advertised that its rotisserie chickens contained no preservatives, even though they contained carrageenan and sodium phosphate.
Founded in 2007, Farm Forward says its mission is to “end factory farming by transforming agriculture, changing policy, and changing the story we tell about animal agriculture.”
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
