In perfect timing for baby boomers looking for yet another thing to deride millennials about, a major British supermarket chain has announced a new touch-free packaging for their store brand raw chicken that allows the chicken to be slid directly onto the cooking apparatus. Sainsbury's UK decided to introduce this new product after conducting a focus group which found that 37% of shoppers under 35 years old get "anxious about touching raw meat."
"Customers, particularly younger ones, are quite scared of touching raw meat," Katherine Hall, Sainsbury's product development manager for meat, fish, and poultry, told the The Times. "These bags allow people, especially those who are time-poor, to just 'rip and tip' the meat straight into the frying pan without touching it."
Hall went on to say that she thinks young customers don't like handling raw meat due to a "lack of education" on food safety or possibly a love of eating out, as many millennials in the focus group said that they'd "prefer someone else" cook for them. She also reported that one woman in the focus group went so far as to cover her chicken with antibacterial spray before she cooked it.
While many young people are breathing sighs of relief about not having to handle the slimy pink meat, some in the food industry have their concerns. "We find it disconcerting that shoppers are so removed from their food that they have these concerns. But we are aware it is a growing trend---and a lot of the data suggests there are concerns about handling raw meat," Ruth Mason, chief food chain adviser at the National Farmers' Union, told the Times.
Unsurprisingly, Twitter saw people both praising and condemning the new millennial-friendly packaging, from "no way am I touching raw meat," to criticizing the fact that the new packaging uses more plastic, a pretty environmentally-unfriendly move.
What do you think about this story? Would you use a package that allowed you to avoid contact with raw meat? What about the issue of additional plastic/waste? Let us know in the comments down below!
