Perdue says 95 percent of its birds will never be treated with the controversial drugs

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.takepart.com/feature/2014/09/04/perdue-cuts-antibiotics?cmpid=tpfood-eml-2014-09-06-water

September 04, 2014 By Jason Best

Jason Best is a regular contributor to TakePart who has worked for Gourmet and the Natural Resources Defense Council.


In response to what public health experts say is a growing crisis of potentially lethal antibiotic-resistant bacteria, poultry giant Perdue has announced that it has stopped using antibiotics in its chicken hatcheries and is limiting applications throughout its business.

“By no longer using any antibiotics in our hatcheries or any human antibiotics in feed, we’ve reached the point where 95 percent of our chickens never receive any human antibiotics, and the remainder receive them only for a few days when prescribed by a veterinarian,” said Bruce Stewart-Brown, senior vice president of food safety, quality, and live operations at Perdue, the nation’s third-largest chicken producer.

It sounds impressive, and in a number of ways, it is. Just five years ago, every single chicken raised by Perdue received human antibiotics in some form. The company cited consumer concerns about rampant use of antibiotics in factory farms as well as its own growing awareness of the problem of antibiotic resistance as its motivation for overhauling its practices.

“We recognized that the public was concerned about the potential impact of the use of these drugs on their ability to effectively treat humans,” said Stewart-Brown. “We focused first on removing growth-promoting antibiotics.”

FULL story at link.

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1. That is probably the biggest causes for the antibiotic resistance problems we are experiencing

today.