One of the nation's leading broiler chicken producers says it's going to eliminate the use of animal-only antibiotics in its chicken production.
Perdue Farms, headquartered in Salisbury, Md., announced the move late last week, saying it would no longer mix animal-only antibiotics—called ionophores—into feed to prevent a common intestinal illness, and would only use the drugs to treat animals that are sick. Company officials cast the decision as a step that addresses consumers' desire for chicken that is completely free of antibiotics.
"Some of our competitors are promising to reduce antibiotics, and others are trying to tell consumers it doesn't matter, but our consumers have already told us they want chicken raised without antibiotics," Perdue Farms chairman Jim Perdue said in a company statement.
The move comes 2 years after Perdue Farms became the first major US poultry producer to stop routinely using medically important antibiotics in chicken production and nearly a decade after it stopped using antibiotics for growth promotion. Public health officials consider the widespread use of human antibiotics for growth promotion and disease prevention in food-producing animals to be a contributing factor in the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
According to the most recent data from the US Food and Drug Administration, approximately 70% of medically important antibiotics sold in the United States are sold for use in food-producing animals.
The company said that with the elimination of animal-only antibiotics, the percentage of chickens it raises that are completely free of antibiotics will rise from 67% to 95%. Chickens treated with antibiotics for illness will be sold by the company through other channels.
Tyson Foods, the nation's largest broiler chicken producer, has said that it aims to eliminate the use of medically important antibiotics from its broiler chicken flocks by the end of September 2017. In addition, several fast-food chains in recent years, including McDonald's and Chick-fil-A, have said they will work with chicken suppliers to curtail antibiotic use.
Source: umn.edu