Chick-fil-A now to let you Eat Mor Chikin with antibiotics

Chick-fil-A is dropping its pledge to serve chicken with“no antibiotics ever” and will instead adopt a less-stringent standard that allows the use of some antibiotics. The complete antibiotic ban, which the chain put in place in 2019, was intended to help lessen humans’ antibiotic resistance, which has been partially blamed on the widespread use of the drugs in livestock.

The fast-growing chicken chain recently announced that it was easing its rules to “maintain the supply of high-quality chicken you expect from us.”The new standard will instead allow the company to use chickens that have been treated with antibiotics, although not those drugs“that are important to human medicine and commonly used to treat people.”

Resistance to antibiotics is an“urgent global public health threat,”according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which says the threat results in 3 million infections and 48,000 deaths annually in the United States alone.

In recent years, food companies have moved to limit the widespread use of antibiotics in livestock, including industry leader McDonald’s, which in 2015 announced that it would adhere to the same standard for chicken that Chickfil-A will be moving to. But chicken that has never been exposed to antibiotics is getting more difficult to source. Last year, megaproducer Tyson dropped its “no antibiotics ever”labels and moved to the same, less-restrictive rule.

Under the NAIHM (or“no antibiotics important to human medicine”) label, antibiotics may be used only to treat actual illnesses in animals rather than to promote growth in livestock, something producers have sometimes done to boost profits.