Natural Society – by Elizabeth Renter
Fast food giant Chick-fil-A, whose restaurants gross well over $3 million each year, announced this week that it would be working towards an antibiotic-free food supply in coming years. The announcement comes as the public and government regulators alike have become concerned about the overuse of antibiotics in meat production, potentially leading to the development and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The restaurant giant says it will take time to work out all of the details and expects their chickens will be totally antibiotic-free by 2019. “From the hatchery to the processing plant,” the company says it will be counting on suppliers and the USDA to ensure no antibiotics are used in the production of their beloved chicken sandwiches.
While the company won’t reveal how much chicken it uses each year, The Verge reports they sold more than 282 million of their flagship chicken sandwiches in 2010. The restaurant is based in Atlanta, GA. and operates nearly 1,800 locations across the country.
Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned about the overuse of antibiotics in livestock production, cautioning, “Without urgent action now, more patients will be thrust back to a time before we had effective drugs.”
The problem isn’t when birds who are sick are treated with antibiotics, but when all birds are given a supply of the drugs in order to fatten them up. This practice of dosing the herd or flock with bacteria-killing drugs puts public health in the backseat to Big Ag profits.
Read: Chick-Fil-A Plans to Remove Dyes, High Fructose Corn Syrup from Food
Use of antibiotics in the livestock industry accounts for 80% of antibiotic use in the country overall – a huge contribution to antibiotic resistance and the development of superbugs. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria including MRSA are said to develop under these conditions, where “bugs” have evolved to survive the onslaught of traditional antibiotics precisely because of their overuse.
Like Chipotle, Chick-fil-A surely sees this as a method of serving the public health while making a considerable amount of money. They’ve warned the cost of purchasing antibiotic-free chicken could boost their sales prices, but that they are trying to keep those costs to a minimum.
Still, people are willing to pay more for antibiotic-free meat, and some who would otherwise not consume fast food may be able to fool themselves into thinking a fried chicken patty on white bread isn’t so bad if it has an “antibiotic-free” marketing campaign behind it.
In other words, the lucratively profitable fast food company stands to become even richer with this move, a move that could reduce the exposure and lessen the evolution of harmful infections while catering to a more health-conscious consumer base.
Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/chick-fil-vows-phase-antibiotics-chicken/#ixzz2tQXMFd4f
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It is all a scam Funny Farmer. They like to play sick jokes like that.
Boy Funny Farmer, if you got that many chickens you should call them up monday morning at their main head quarters and cut a deal with them. I bet though that they will not accept your deal though because they would probobly rather get their birds from china any way.
Yea, I thin that chic a fil a or what ever they call themselves are BS for sure unless they would accept your deal if you do call them
It doesn’t matter. If they’re cutting the antibiotics out, it’s only because the public became aware of the problem, so they’re seizing the opportunity to grab a new advertising angle.
They’ll eliminate one poison and stuff your belly with a dozen different ones that you’ve never heard of yet.
Basically, everyone in the food business is trying to give you the cheapest crap with the longest shelf-life possible, and they don’t care in the least if it kills you in a week, as long as they get your buck.
The standard business model only asks “How cheap can we make this stuff and stiff find suckers dumb enough to eat it?”
Forget GMO labeling. Stop buying food that requires any label, and they’ll eventually stop lying about what’s in it. If people didn’t buy crap, no one would be selling it.
and why does it take 5 years to “phase out” antibiotics anyway? It takes less than a year to grow a chicken from the egg to adulthood, so their “phase out” sounds like BS anyway.
They figure they’ll be out of business in four years, or you’ll forget about it in two, but I don’t think they’re going to phase out anything.