I can't decide if this is a good idea or not:

If some of the meat in supermarkets is looking rosier than it used to, the reason is that a growing number of markets are selling it in airtight packages treated with a touch of carbon monoxide to help the product stay red for weeks.

This form of "modified atmosphere packaging," a technique in which other gases replace oxygen, has become more widely used as supermarkets eliminate their butchers and buy precut, "case-ready" meat from processing plants.

I've got mixed feelings. Saying consumers should be able to use color to help distinguish which meats are fresh is kind of a bad argument, in my opinion. Color is often a bad indicator in that brown meat isn't always rotten. Of course, now we'll just have the opposite problem, which admittedly isn't much better for consumers. But I'm not convinced just yet if it's really all that bad.

But I do think the science of it is interesting! Does anybody know if CO inhibits bacterial growth (bacteria do use heme groups as well...)? Just curious.