Chick-fil-A announced Tuesday that it plans to phase out serving chickens raised with antibiotics. The fast food chain is calling for the changes along their supply chain to happen within five years.
“We are asking suppliers to work with the USDA to verify that antibiotics are never administered from the hatchery to the processing plant,” reads a company statement.
Company president and CEO Dan Cathy said the move is to continue a tradition of offering “the highest quality ingredients.”
Keep Antibiotics Working, a coalition of health, consumer, agricultural, environmental, humane and other advocacy groups, praised the company for the move and said that, in the wake of the multidrug-resistant Salmonella outbreak linked to Foster Farms chicken, “the routine use of antibiotics to raise animals is no longer acceptable. We hope that Chick-fil-A’s transition will occur sooner than 5 years from now, and anticipate that other restaurants will follow.”
The coalition says that the change is good for both public health and for business, citing “the stock market trajectory of Chipotle, which also buys meat from animals given few or no antibiotics.”
