The Micky-D ripple effect
Joining the ranks of Chick-fil-A* and Chipotle, fast-food giant McDonald’s is promising us antibiotic free chicken by 2017 in its 14,000 U.S. locations.
Right now, farmers use antibiotics to keep flocks healthy and grow faster. McDonald’s said more health conscious consumers drove their decision to start using chickens that are not given the same antibiotics that are used to treat people. The CDC says ‘superbugs’ lead to 23,000 deaths a year and 2 million illnesses.
The Pew Charitable Trust’s Gail Hansen says, “When you consider in the United States we raise 9 billion chickens a year. Every time you give an antibiotic into a bird, you potentially can get antibiotic resistance.” Hansen calls McDonald’s shift in policy a game changer. As another source said, when Chik-filet and McDonald’s do something, it’s not some Berkeley, California thing … it’s mainstream.
So how much more money will consumers have to fork over to pay for this trend? Raising antibiotic-free chickens is more expensive says University of Georgia Veterinarian Chuck Hofacre: “It’ll take more corn and soybean to be fed to the chickens to get the same amount of chicken meat.” The National Chicken Council says that translates into 5 to 7 cents a pound. In other words, if the price of corn goes up, so will your Chicken McNugget.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the company name of Chick-fil-A. The text has been corrected.
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