Opinion: Chickens just have to say no to drugs

Yes, it can be done. Livestock operations can raise chickens without using antibiotics that are useful for treating infections in humans. Perdue Farms announced this week that it is no longer using any “human antibiotics” in its chickens, except to treat actual disease. Farms commonly use antibiotics to make animals grow faster, or to prevent disease from rampaging through crowded pens. The company isn’t using any antibiotics at all to promote growth, it said, but is using a non-human antibiotic to control an intestinal disease.

The problem with the freewheeling overuse of antibiotics isn’t that you will ingest the drugs with your lunch; federal rules require the antibiotics to have cleared the animals’ systems before they can be slaughtered. But overuse of antibiotics has been pinned as one of the major causes of the rise of antibiotic-resistant infections.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

“Antibiotics are widely used in food-producing animals. The 2013 Threats report points out that according to data published by FDA, there are more kilograms of antibiotics sold in the United States for food-producing animals than for people. This use contributes to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in food-producing animals.

Actually, something like 80% to 85% of the antibiotics in this country are for the agriculture industry.

The Perdue news is a major accomplishment. It shows that eliminating this longstanding, bad practice is finally making headway with the big boys -- Perdue is the third-largest chicken producer in the nation -- not just with small, boutique operations. On its own, the company can’t do much to fight the emergence of resistant bacteria; the important thing here is that by showing the feasibility of raising regular, non-organic chickens without the use of antibiotics that are needed for human health, other companies are more likely to follow.

Still, it would be nice to think of a livestock industry in which animals might be raised without any antibiotics unless they actually get sick. One in which they grow because of nourishment, and aren’t raised in sick-making conditions that encourage the spread of disease. Just a thought.

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