

Perdue Says Its Hatching Chicks Are Off Antibiotics - sizzle
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/09/03/345315380/perdue-says-its-hatching-chicks-are-off-antibiotics?sc=tw

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yannibuk
What's interesting is that a big driver for this is social media. I was at a
conference once & the CEO of Perdue listed this as a top driver behind this
movement. He justified it this way: imagine that it costs an extra $0.01 per
pound to create chicken meat that is antibiotic free. If the profit margin was
$0.05 per pound that would cut profits by 20%. Today, negative PR on Facebook
or Twitter can quickly spread to erode the value of a brand far more than
$0.01 per pound of cost savings. He said that the reason for the switch is
driven by consumers, who are now empowered by social media.

From a nutrition tech standpoint there are a number of products including
probiotics, beta glucans & others that help to protect the birds by boosting
immune system activity rather than by killing bacteria. When used in
combination with vaccines they can be very effective, albeit slightly more
expensive. However, these ingredients add cost & come at a metabolic cost to
the animal (i.e. it takes more food to produce 1 pound of meat if more of that
energy is directed towards a functioning immune system & away from weight
gain).

Animal nutrition science is in many ways more advanced than human nutrition
due to the ability to conduct controlled studies and access to large amounts
of data. However, the goals are very different.

Animals account for ~80% of antibiotic usage in the U.S. and MRSA now kills
more people in the U.S. than HIV. It's an interesting topic.

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micro_cam
So antibiotics in animal feed aren't usually for protection from infection.
They promote growth and bulk via mechanisms that aren't really well understood
and were discovered somewhat by accident when someone started feeding waste
from antibiotic production to chickens.

Really: [http://amrls.cvm.msu.edu/pharmacology/antimicrobial-usage-
in...](http://amrls.cvm.msu.edu/pharmacology/antimicrobial-usage-in-
animals/non-therapuetic-use-of-antimicrobials-in-animals/use-of-antibiotics-
in-animals-for-growth-promotion)

[http://www.ncsu.edu/project/swine_extension/healthyhogs/book...](http://www.ncsu.edu/project/swine_extension/healthyhogs/book2004/thakur/thakur.htm)

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makmanalp
True! But the side effect of massive use seems to be the evolution of
antibiotic-resistant bugs.

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voxic11
Do you have any evidence of that? I thought most antibiotics used on farm
animals were already not commonly used on humans?

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AustinScript
I don't see a peer reviewed study but it does appear to be the FDAs position :

"Bacteria evolve to survive threats to their existence. In both humans and
animals, even appropriate therapeutic uses of antibiotics can promote the
development of drug resistant bacteria. When such bacteria enter the food
supply, they can be transferred to the people who eat food from the treated
animal."

I suggest reading the article to really understand what they are saying rather
than dissecting the little tidbit I picked out but it sounds as if it doesn't
matter if the exact same drug is used to treat both humans and animals, there
is still a threat.

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Alex3917
If you've never seen them, the infamous chicken farm footage from Baraka and
Samsara is now on YouTube:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFQhn8RW0Nk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFQhn8RW0Nk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOLfVMyql1M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOLfVMyql1M)

~~~
Shivetya
farming at an industrial scale would upset many people, even for practices
that are wholly legal. There are every day occurrences in this industry the
public would not want to know and might even tune it out when presented
because of the adverse reaction it would cause.

the best example is breeding chickens for egg laying, males are not wanted.

~~~
Joeboy
> the best example is breeding chickens for egg laying, males are not wanted.

That applies to farming most animals, at all scales.

It seems kind of odd that feminists have
[http://www.caroljadams.com/spom.html](http://www.caroljadams.com/spom.html),
while the MRAs have missed the boat on this one as far as I know.

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giarc
I can't find this from a reputable source, but a FB friend shared a Buzzfeed
story about the advancement in egg selection. Apparently Unilever has
developed a technique to sex the eggs before they hatch and therefore can
prevent the males from being born. As you may know, males are killed on day 1
since they serve no financial benefit to chicken farmers. Therefore, they can
stop the practice of sending the male chickens to the macerator.

~~~
poultron
Hey there, I'm intimately familiar with the poultry industry in all aspects.
What you're referencing is for egg-utilizing companies, like unilever, who
need eggs in their products (ice creams, etc.). Unilever is requiring their
egg producers to adopt new technologies to detect male chicks in the eggs and
prevent them from hatching, leading to only the female chicks growing into
hens, which lay the desired eggs.

The chicken-producing industry (very different from the egg producing
industry) does use males. They're differentiated for some products (Perdue's
Oven Stuffer Roasters, for example), but 95% of all producers in the country
now run "Straight-run" operations, meaning they dont differentiate between
male and female birds (no sexing the chicks and separating them). Originally
this was a problem, conforming your machines to process two different sized
birds (a double-bell-curve, so to speak), but streamlining the selective
breeding over the years has brought the females and males together as far as
feed conversions and weight gains go.

Always happy to shed light on the poultry industry and it's many quirks :)

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dredmorbius
The technical term for a sexual dimorphic bodyweight delta would be a _bimodal
distribution_.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimodal_distribution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bimodal_distribution)

Fascinating bit about selective breeding to reduce the difference though.

Then there's the bit about white meat to the US, dark meat to Russia.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2011/01/the_dark_sid...](http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2011/01/the_dark_side_of_the_bird.html)

~~~
poultron
Russia has a complete ban currently on dark meat. And Perdue is publicly
quoted as exporting zero meat to Russia anymore, dark or white.

Either way, it's the American Consumer that demands white meat... personally
I'm a dark meat chap myself.

~~~
dredmorbius
The Russian situation is recent, due to the Ukranian conflict. The more
general observation that there are different preferences in poultry
consumption globally, resulting in, literally, one bird being split and sent
to opposite ends of the Earth, is what I was emphasizing.

Not knocking you in any way here, just adding my own two bits. Appreciate your
insider's view, really.

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rayiner
I always thought it was illegal (in the US) to use antibiotics in chicken. At
least that's what the packaging says.

~~~
ceejayoz
[http://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-
industry/chi...](http://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-
industry/chickopedia/#six)

> All chicken is “antibiotic-free” in the sense that no antibiotic residues
> are present in the meat due to the withdrawal periods and other precautions
> required by the government and observed by the chicken companies.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
Yes, no antibiotics residues are present in the chicken, because of the long
periods ... but nobody can guarantee, that the same is true for resistant
bacteria ...

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epynonymous
can i just say duh? how else do you get so many chicken mcnuggets and fried
chicken? it's like reverse survival of the fittest, the ones that should die
are saved. yay viruses!

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_red
How is this different than the nearly universal use of vaccines?

Before you compulsively knee-jerk and claim that I think vaccines are evil and
cause autism, take a breath.

The most damming argument _against_ vaccines is that the continual use of
vaccines (i.e. forced antibody production) produces same set of evolutionary
selectors that help create 'superbugs' that injected antibiotics are often
derided for.

However this basic biological fact escapes most people that haven't taken
Biology 102 and beyond (which is 99% of the population).

~~~
quotemstr
One of the goals of vaccination is to deprive pathogens of an environment
faster than selection pressure allows the pathogen to evade the vaccine.
That's how we drove smallpox to extinction in the wild.

~~~
IgorPartola
Also, don't we mostly vaccinate against viruses, whereas antibiotics are to be
used against bacterial infections?

