Source: MEATINGPLACE, 9/3/14

Perdue Foods Inc. says it has reached a milestone in its program to eliminate the use of human antibiotics in its chickens by removing the use of all antibiotics in its hatcheries.

The company noted that it spent the last 12 years adjusting its use of antibiotics in chickens – which now exceed standards set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in December 2013 – during a news conference this morning in Washington, D.C.
“Consumers are interested in how their chickens are processed,” explained Perdue Chairman Jim Perdue. “Our program is not so much based on pressure (from regulators), but from what we hear from consumers and their concerns.”

Perdue and Dr. Bruce Stewart-Brown, senior vice president of food safety and live operations at Perdue, announced that while the company does use an animal-only antibiotic to control an intestinal parasite and will still use antibiotics to treat and control illness in sick flocks, the processor is at a point where 95 percent of its birds never receive any human antibiotics, which could be used to boost production rates. However, if antibiotics are used, they are not marketed as no-antibiotics-ever or organic.

“Most hatcheries typically use small amounts of antibiotics when vaccinating the eggs,” said Stewart-Brown. “The primary purpose is to prevent infection from entering through the vaccination site. In fact, this use is even allowed by the National Organic Program – though we don’t allow it in our organic products. We invested in our hatcheries to create a clean environment and are able to successfully vaccinate eggs without antibiotics.”

He went on to say, “This evolution is an opportunity to include the use of more natural medicines in approaching animal health, including herbs, organic and essential oils and yucca instead of human antibiotics. These efforts may not be completely effective now, but using these and other strategies meet regulatory standards and we have other work to do in this area.”
Perdue already offers “organic” chicken products and “no-antibiotics-ever” poultry, pork and beef products and the end of all human antibiotic in hatcheries is the culmination of expansion of such practices, said Jim Perdue.

“We’re not trying to turn the world into 'no-antibiotics-ever,’ but reducing the use of animal-only antibiotics is also on the agenda,” he explained.

Perdue and Stewart-Brown added that there are costs linked to the reduced use of antibiotics in chickens – which they said “will trickle down to consumers.” But they also noted that retailers ultimately set the prices for what shoppers will pay for products that may be more costly because they are processed differently. However, there won’t be a large price hit at one time coming up, since this process has evolved over the 12 years of the program, added Stewart-Brown.