To maintain supply of the high quality chicken you expect from us Chick-fil-A restaurants in the US and Puerto Rico will shift from chicken raised with no antibiotics ever to chicken raised with no antibiotics important to human medicine ((NAIHM) starting in the spring of 2024. Canadian restaurants will transition from chicken raised without antibiotics the chicken raised with no antibiotic important to human medicine starting in the spring of 2024. www.chick-fil-a.com/our-chicken-commitment.
Chick-fil-A is reintroducing antibiotics back into their chicken when I heard that I was a little alarmed so I did some research maybe I can help you understand what's happening in the chicken industry. Chick-fil-A made a pledge in 2014 to serve only chicken that had never been exposed to antibiotics as did Tyson Foods, one of their suppliers. You see in the poultry industry has been using antibiotics routinely in chicken feed to prevent disease in crowded conditions with poor sanitation. And, if we're honest, because they learned that antibiotics make them gain weight. But daily antibiotics also make smart bacteria mutate and become resistant and this would transfer to people who ate the meat. And more [chickens] began getting nasty infections that no longer responded to any antibiotics and they were dying. The pressure was on and No Antibiotics Ever or NAE became a status label in the chicken business. They just charged 20% more for the extra care required without antibiotics. And to make up for the dead chickens that got sick after a decade or so, that 20% increase has been absorbed into the collective acceptance of grocery shoppers and largely forgotten. Well, it has been forgotten. That's just the price of chicken, right? Things were good for a while. The whole process was better. Then along came super inflationary pressure on production costs, and the industry is again looking for pharmaceutical relief. And frankly sticker-shocked consumers are looking for a reprieve as well a difference designation in the chicken Market is now in favor. NAIHM, or No Antibiotics Important in Human Medicine. Has the industry dropped the bar a little here Tyson Foods announced last year they are largely abandoning the NAE standard preferring instead the NAIHM label. This means that they can now use antibiotics in raising chickens that are not used to treat conditions in humans except, of course, in their organic line where antibiotics are still prohibited. So this reserves antibiotics for human diseases for us, preserving their effectiveness there, and this is with the blessing of the FDA and the World Health Organization. The more relaxed standard seems to even have the buy-in and some of the more natural-minded. Although she works for Southland Organics, veterinarian student Alyssa Routon says,
NAE was correct in it's time, [but it is] not ideal for animals. We cannot treat disease, and that drives prices up for consumers.
I get that there can be overreach and regulation which needs to be adjusted as greater understanding comes to light but the implementation here seems a little wonky on this. There doesn't seem to be a listing I can find anywhere that specifies which drugs qualify for the NAIHM designation. So who gets to decide that status? As a pharmacist, I worry that we won't always know the full impact of animal antibiotics on humans when they eat the meat. We are after all animals too so what about negative effects on our gut bacteria? I would say we need to test them for safety? We could test them in other ways but that probably won't happen. For me personally, I think I just prefer to pay a little more and buy organic which will always be NAE, No Antibiotics Ever. They position an NAIHM in the best interest of animal husbandry. But let's face it, the public information spigot of Big Food doesn't exactly have the reputation of being a fountain of Truth. Consumers are pretty smart. We've had the NAE standard already baked in the price of chicken for nearly a decade. Now they want to drop the standard, but I bet they won't drop the retail price proportionally. Sales for Tyson Foods were almost $53 billion in 2023. Profit was $933 Million which was down 79% from 2022. Maybe that's the real motive.
