The parent company of KFC said it will stop buying chicken that is raised using antibiotics that are important to human medicine.
The announcement by the giant chicken chain came after years of pressure from food safety and consumer advocacy groups, and two years after other food companies such as McDonald's, Chick-fil-A, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell made similar pledges to phase out the use of products from animals treated with the antibiotics _ a practice linked to the rise of "super bug" pathogens that are resistant to multiple drugs.
The policy change is expected to have a widespread effect on the poultry industry, because KFC _ owned by Yum Brands _ buys its chicken from a great many flocks as a food-safety precaution, according to Lena Brook, food policy advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
With KFC's shift, more than half of the nation's poultry supply chain will be antibiotic-free in the near future, activist said.
Matthew Wellington, antibiotics program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said the policy change "should have lasting effects on the way these life-saving medicines are used in the chicken industry."
"This announcement is a win for anybody who might someday depend on antibiotics to get well or even save their lives _ i.e. everybody," Wellington said.
Routinely feeding antibiotics to animals raised for food has been linked to the surge in resistant strains of bacteria that cause serious human illnesses, blamed for about 23,000 additional deaths annually and $55 million in healthcare costs, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Tthis year, Burger King owner Restaurant Brands International pledged to avoid buying poultry that is fed antibiotics considered "critically important" to human health _ a more narrow category of drugs than those eliminated by KFC.
Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives for Consumers Union called on other fast-food chains to follow KFC's lead.
"Antibiotics should only be used to treat disease and not wasted on healthy livestock to make them grow faster or to compensate for filthy conditions on factory farms," Halloran said. "It's time for all fast-food restaurants to help ensure antibiotics keep working by rejecting meat and poultry suppliers who misuse these vital drugs."
