Costco Sued Over Popular Foods
Things are heating up for Costco’s famous $5 chicken — now in the legal hot seat over a proposed class action lawsuit.
A complaint filed in January in California accuses Costco of falsely advertising its rotisserie chicken as a preservative and alleges the warehouse club “duped” customers who believed that description out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
“Despite Costco’s ‘No Preservatives’ representation, Costco uses sodium phosphate and carrageenan additives,” the complaint reads.
Sodium phosphate is used to retain moisture; and increases shelf life. Carrageenan, a thickener from seaweed, is used for the same purpose.
The lawsuit states that Costco should not have advertised the chicken because it does not contain any preservatives, saying that the company “knew or should have known that the presence of these ingredients would be important information” to consumers. Contrary to that, although sodium phosphate and carrageenan there is listed in the ingredients on the package itself, Costco misled customers by writing that information in small print on the back.
The lawsuit also accuses Costco of unfair competition on the grounds that customers paid more for the chicken than they would have if it had not been advertised as preservative free.
In a statement to New York TimesCostco said it has changed its in-store and online signage to remove claims that it is preservative-free. It told the newspaper that the two additives that caused the case are used to “maintain moisture, texture and consistency of the product,” adding that “both ingredients have been approved by food safety authorities.”
If the plaintiffs win certification of the class action, the class could include anyone who has ever bought Costco’s famous fried chicken.
The two plaintiffs, who want to be compensated for an unspecified amount, each said in this case that they would not have bought the chicken if they had known that it contained these ingredients. The complaint also states, however, that each plaintiff “intends to purchase Rotisserie Chicken in the future.”
