Raised Without Antibiotics

Posted on August 15, 2007  Comments (8)

Tyson is going to start selling chicken Raised Without Antibiotics. The overuse of antibiotics is a huge problem and the overuse in the raising of livestock is a huge problem.

“While we have great confidence in the quality of our traditional chicken, we’re also committed to providing mainstream consumers with the kind of products they want,” said Richard L. Bond, president and CEO of Tyson Foods. “According to our research, 91% of consumers agree it’s important to have fresh chicken produced and labeled ‘raised without antibiotics’,” Bond said.

Tyson started selling 100% All Naturalâ„¢, Raised Without Antibiotics chicken this week. The product is being distributed nationwide in newly-designed packaging highlighting that the chicken is raised without antibiotics and contains no artificial ingredients.

While it is nice they will start selling a portion of chicken raised without using antibiotics and endangering the health of the community by helping evolve super-resistant bugs this is really a pretty small step I would guess. The risk is not even mainly to the person eating the food pumped full of antibiotics it is to everyone when drug resistant bacteria are evolved through the overuse of antibiotics. Also, 100% All Natural is trademarked? Give me a break.

Nationwide Survey Reveals Most Americans are Unaware They Consume Beef and Poultry Raised on Antibiotics (2003)

“Antibiotic medicines are losing effectiveness on humans due to their increased use in animal feed,” said Margaret Mellon, Ph.D, JD, director of the food and environment program for the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Animals raised in natural environments rarely require the use of antibiotics. Americans who choose meat produced this way are making conscious decisions to ensure that antibiotics will still be working when they or their family need them.” The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that 70 percent of all antibiotics in the United States are now fed to animals raised for human consumption in order to hasten the animals’ growth or prevent illness amid crowded, unsanitary conditions on factory farms.

Abuse of Antibiotics at Factory Farms Threatens the Effectiveness of Drugs Used to Treat Disease in Humans:

According to the Center for Disease Control, more than one-third of the salmonella poisoning cases in 1997 were found to be resistant to five antibiotics. Drug resistance in campylobacter bacteria, the most commonly known cause of bacterial food-borne illness in the United States, increased from zero in 1991 to 14 percent in 1998.
…
The European Union, on the recommendation of the World Health Organization, has banned the use of antibiotics to promote the growth of livestock animals when those drugs are also used to treat people. The Center for Disease Control has agreed with this position, but the U.S. government has failed to reduce the threat that ineffective antibiotics pose to human health. (Lieberman, et.al., 1999)

To reduce serious health threats, the Food and Drug Administration should ban the use of antibiotics to promote livestock growth when those antibiotics are used to treat humans.

8 Responses to “Raised Without Antibiotics”

  1. Nancy Henley
    August 22nd, 2007 @ 1:58 pm

    What about hormones included in poultry and red meats? We do have an increase in certain cancers.

  2. CuriousCat: Bacteria Race Ahead of Drugs
    January 21st, 2008 @ 10:08 am

    This is a serious problem. And it is sad to see yet another example of well know scientific facts being ignored and by so doing threatening the healthy lives of others…

  3. CuriousCat: Fight to curtail antibiotics in animal feed
    January 29th, 2008 @ 9:23 am

    “Consumer advocates have been campaigning for years to curb the use of antibiotics in agriculture, citing studies that show that 70 percent of all U.S. antibiotics are administered in low doses – not to treat disease, but to promote the growth of pigs, sheep, chicken and cattle…”

  4. CuriousCat » Bacteria Can Transfer Genes to Other Bacteria
    February 25th, 2008 @ 8:49 am

    Microbiologists of the 1950’s did not appreciate the stunning extent to which bacteria swap genes…

  5. Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog » Antibiotics Breed Superbugs Faster Than Expected
    February 24th, 2010 @ 11:04 pm

    […] goes unfinished, or when antibiotics used on farms enter food and water at low levels. … Of the 35 million pounds of antibiotics consumed annually in the United States, 80 percent goes to f…. Much of it is used to treat diseases spread by industrial husbandry practices, or simply to […]

  6. What Happens If the Overuse of Antibiotics Leads to Them No Longer Working? » Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog
    August 9th, 2011 @ 8:32 pm

    Antibiotics have been a miraculous tool to keep up healthy. Like vaccines this full value of this tool is wasted if it is used improperly. Vaccines value is wasted when they are not used enough. Antibiotics lose potency when they are overused…

  7. Dangerous Drug-Resistant Strains of TB are a Growing Threat » Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog
    March 28th, 2012 @ 9:03 am

    […] catastrophic societal failures. While tuberculosis failures may be larger in poorer countries, rich countries are failing probably much more critically in the misuse of anti-biotics (I would guess, without having much evidence at my fingertips to back up my opinion. I believe the […]

  8. 80% of the Antibiotics in the USA are Used in Agriculture and Aquaculture » Curious Cat Science Blog
    December 31st, 2013 @ 2:05 am

    This flood of antibiotics released into the environment – sprayed on fruit trees and fed to the likes of livestock, poultry and salmon, among other uses – has led bacteria to evolve…

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