The claim seems like a total reach to me. The two ingredients in question are carrageenan, which I’m very familiar with and is definitely not a preservative, and sodium phosphate, which I just had to google, but also doesn’t appear to be a preservative.
I guess it depends on how you define “preservative”; if you stretch the meaning a bit it could work, since both ingredients appear to be used to hold moisture longer in the product thereby “preserving” its state, but I really don’t think that’s how the food industry or consumers in general understand the term. If so we could say the same about table salt…which, of course, is regularly employed as an actual preservative! But salt doesn’t have a scary chemical name so it must be okay
The litigants in this case are quite busy . . . besides Costco they’ve filed lawsuits against cars-dot-com, Adobe, Capital One, Lume Deodorant, Dr. Broner’s Toothpaste, and others within the last year or two.
And yes, water holding capabilities are part of the preservation “arsenal” of these compounds. If Costco would add them to their chicken I think saying it is without preservatives is a bit of a stretch
