KFC to ditch antibiotics in finger-lickin' good chicken
For perhaps the first time ever, Colonel Sanders is receiving a round of applause from health experts. Kentucky Fried Chicken has announced that by 2018, all of its finger-lickin’ good chicken will be raised without antibiotics that are important to human health. Many of the infections that crop up in humans are treated with antibiotics also used in livestock and poultry. Often, those drugs are given to livestock not to treat infection, but to prevent disease and promote growth. That can contribute to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can then make their way into humans.
The news is a big victory for consumer health groups who lobbied KFC — one of the largest chicken buyers in the US — to change its policies. Those advocates are currently lobbying state legislatures to pass laws that ban the routine use of antibiotics in livestock. KFC’s announcement follows similar moves by Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s, and Subway.
