Scott Sechler, owner of Bell & Evans, Fredericksburg, Pennsylvania, USA, is really big on oregano and not just for tea. He feeds it to his chickens as an alternative to antibiotics.
Off and on over the last three years or so, his chickens have been eating a specially milled diet laced with oregano oil and a touch of cinnamon. Sechler swears by the concoction as a way to fight off bacterial diseases that plague meat and poultry producers without resorting to antibiotics, which some experts say can be detrimental to the humans who eat the meat.
Products at Bell & Evans include frozen chicken breasts, tenders, patties and nuggets, plus pulled chicken barbecue and Buffalo wings; there are also gluten-free breasts, tenders, nuggets and patties. The oregano oil product Sechler uses, By-O-Reg Plus, is imported from Ropapharm International. based Zaandam, the Netherlands, where it has been shown to control diarrhea in piglets.
But skeptics of herbal medicines abound, as any quick Internet search demonstrates. "Oil of oregano is a perennial one, advertised as a cure for just about everything," said Scott Gavura, a pharmacist in Toronto, Canada, who writes for the Web site Science-Based Medicine. "But there isn't any evidence, there are too many unanswered questions and the only proponents for it are the ones producing it."
Data on sales of antibiotic-free meat is hard to come by, but it accounts for a tiny fraction of the overall market. Sales in the United States of organic meat, poultry and fish, which by law must be raised without antibiotics, totaled $538 million in 2011, according to the Organic Trade Association. By comparison, sales of all beef that year were $79 billion. Still, retailers like Costco, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, as well as some restaurant chains, complain that they cannot get enough antibiotic-free meat.
