This story amuses me, it's 12 years old, Big deal for Pathway to go case ready, now 12 years later they no longer exist. ShopRite didn't touch it, kept cutting meat in store and as of 2012, ShopRite is the largest retailer-owned cooperative in the U.S.  Makes me wonder how much case ready had to do with the loss of business for Pathway and it's death.

Here's the Beef. So, Where's the Butcher?

By CONSTANCE L. HAYS

Published: February 15, 2003

Over the summer, a new Pathmark supermarket opened in a fast-growing corner of Staten Island. From the outside, it looks unremarkable. But inside, it holds the latest in supermarket meat -- steaks and cutlets that are not merely someone's future meal, but byproducts of the industry's battle to keep up with Wal-Mart, its biggest rival.

There in the meat section are small white tubs holding pale pink pork chops, their profiles distinct beneath the layer of plastic that seals them off from the world. They, too, look unremarkable except that they were not prepared by the store's butcher. This is ''case ready'' meat, which differs from traditional supermarket fare in that it is delivered, with its cutting, packaging and labeling complete, to stores in a process that has grown rapidly in popularity among retailers in the last 18 months.

It has also brought controversy. Some of the meat is injected with a saline solution to keep it both good-looking and fresh, and some shoppers complain about the taste. Many of the steaks and chops sold at Wal-Mart note, on their packages, that they contain up to 12 percent liquid. Do they shrink on the grill? Yes, say people who have cooked them. Union leaders anxious to preserve jobs have called for regulations on case-ready meat to make shoppers more aware of what they are buying.

The main difference between case-ready meat and store-handled meat is that the former is cut, trimmed, packaged and labeled at a plant, not in the back room of a supermarket. The shelf life of case-ready meat is said to be longer, because the package is ''flushed'' with gas, usually combinations of oxygen and carbon dioxide, to keep everything inside looking fresh. The saline treatment ''keeps the bloom on the meat,'' as a spokesman for Wal-Mart Stores put it.

Since September 2001, Wal-Mart has sold only case-ready meat. The change followed a vote by workers at a Wal-Mart supercenter in Texas who voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers, a unit of the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

Pathmark is the first supermarket chain in New York City to serve meat to shoppers this way, but New York may be the final frontier. In the last year, meat packers report a surge in orders for case-ready meat as supermarkets eagerly follow Wal-Mart's lead.