The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: chicken
California Poultry Giant To Shift Away From Using Antibiotics In Its Poultry

California Poultry Giant To Shift Away From Using Antibiotics In Its Poultry

By Geoffrey Mohan, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

California poultry giant Foster Farms has joined the flock of meat companies eschewing the use of antibiotics, pledging to eliminate all those used to combat infection in humans.

The company’s promise comes ahead of Tuesday’s White House forum on the use of antibiotics, and amid rising concern that use of the drugs to raise livestock has aided the proliferation of resistant strains of bacteria among humans.

More than 2 million people in the U.S. are infected with such strains annually, and at least 23,000 die as a result, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Our company is committed to responsible growing practices that help preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics for human health and medicine,” Foster Farms Chief Executive and President Ron Foster said.

Although over-prescription of antibiotics to humans has been a long-term driver of drug-resistant strains, antibiotic use for animals also has been linked to resistant strains of salmonella and campylobacter.

Foster Farms introduced two new antibiotic-free product lines in April: Certified Organic and Simply Raised.

The company has eliminated all antibiotics that the U.S. Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration deem critical to human medicine, said company spokesman Ira Brill.

“We have a long-term goal of fully eliminating all antibiotics that are used in the practice of human medicine,” he said.

Brill said he could not offer a timeline for a complete elimination of antibiotics that also are prescribed to humans. “I don’t think we can put a date on that except to say that we are aggressively working towards that goal,” he said.

The company is researching alternative practices to improve overall flock health, Brill said. “As you continue to improve bird health, then your need for antibiotics declines,” he said.

ConAgra to pay $11.2 million to settle salmonella criminal case

Foster’s change of heart about antibiotics follows shifts away from use of human antibiotics by fellow poultry giant Perdue, as well as retail food chains McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle and Panera, among others.

The CEO of Sanderson Farms, however, told the Wall Street Journal recently that he has no plans to move away from antibiotics.

Consumer pressure for antibiotics-free meat has intensified over the last several years. Sales of organic beef, pork, poultry and fish increased 11 percent from 2012 to 2013, to $675 million, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group pushing to limit use of the drugs.

Jonathan Kaplan, director of the group’s food and agriculture program, credited Foster Farms for being “on track and heading in the right direction.”

But the company’s announcement “is not quite as robust as what Perdue has already accomplished or what Tyson has pledged to do,” Kaplan said. “They still have committed to moving away from the medically important antibiotics, and that’s the main concern.”

About a third of the broiler chickens produced now are raised with tight restrictions on antibiotic use, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“We definitely feel like we are hitting a tipping point for antibiotic stewardship in the poultry industry,” Kaplan said. “This is more than a microtrend. This is a tsunami.”

Foster Farms, which employs about 12,000 people nationally and has sales of $2.7 billion, is based in Livingston, Calif., about 65 miles east of San Jose, and operates five production facilities in the state as well as numerous ranches.

The company has battled back from a 2013 outbreak of salmonella that sickened hundreds of people in 2013, as well as a more recent cockroach infestation and rash of food safety citations at its Livingston plant.

Since then, it has revamped its food safety procedures. Measured salmonella prevalence on poultry at Foster facilities is now well below USDA and industrywide standards, Brill said.

“If you look back on the food safety issues, that was an area where we probably satisfied ourselves with being average — and we realized you cannot lead in a lot of areas if you don’t lead in all areas,” Brill said. “Right now, consumers can look at Foster Farms as about the safest chickens you can buy.”

Photo: No more drugs in your food? Major win. Creativity103 via Flickr

That Meaty Dilemma

That Meaty Dilemma

We Americans love our meat and so of course does our meat industry. But health concerns over a diet high in meat protein has the medical establishment encouraging us to eat less meat in general, and less red meat in particular.

The BBC has just issued some of the results of an investigation into the benefits and disadvantage of eating red and processed meat, and the results are not pretty for the unabashed carnivores among us.

Red meat, though high in protein and iron is loaded with that nasty saturated fat.  And for you bacon and sausage lovers out there, those goodies “have around 16 times more saturated fat per gram than tofu.” Chicken fares better on the health scale, which will please some quarters in big agriculture, but not others.

Photo: Meat Safety Council

Beef’s Environmental Costs Far Outweigh Poultry, Pork

Beef’s Environmental Costs Far Outweigh Poultry, Pork

Washington (AFP) – Beef is by far the most costly protein when it comes to the environmental damage wreaked by feeding and raising cattle, according to a study out Monday.

Beef requires 28 times more land than the average total needed to produce either dairy, eggs, poultry or pork, said the research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Raising beef also requires 11 times more irrigation water than other proteins, according to researchers at Bard College in New York, Yale University in Connecticut and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

Beef spews far more pollution into the environment, producing five times as many greenhouse gas emissions and six times the reactive nitrogen from fertilizer compared to the other proteins, the study found.

“Beef is consistently the least resource-efficient of the five animal categories,” said the study, which said on average beef was about 10 times as costly as other proteins.

Beef also makes up about seven percent of all consumed calories in the U.S. diet, it said.

To “most effectively” cut back on these environmental costs, the authors recommended “minimizing beef consumption.”

Raising livestock for food is a practice that contributes to one fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, and also pollutes water and interferes with biodiversity, according to the study authors.

The study was based on a decade’s worth of data on land, irrigation water, and fertilizer from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Energy.

Researchers used the 2000-2010 data to calculate the amount of resources needed to produce animal feed for each edible livestock.

About every ten calories fed to poultry or pork accounted for one calorie consumed by humans. This ratio was nearly four times higher for beef.

Poultry, pork, eggs and dairy all added up to similar costs across the board, while beef was consistently the outlier.

They did not include fish in their study due to lack of data on feed use and the relatively small portion of calories (0.5 percent) it makes up in the average American diet.

Representatives of the U.S. beef industry questioned the methodology of the study, and said environmental improvements have been made in recent years.

“The PNAS study represents a gross over-simplification of the complex systems that make up the beef value chain,” said Kim Stackhouse, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association director of sustainability research.

“The fact is the U.S. beef industry produces beef with lower greenhouse gas emissions than any other country.”

According to Amy Dickie, who led a study in April on agricultural strategies for cutting back on global warming, the findings are in line with recent research that has shown the high greehhouse gases involved in beef production.

“I am glad to see that the authors also considered water, nutrient, and land use which are all important resources and are intensively used by beef and dairy cattle,” said Dickie, who works for the consulting firm California Environmental Associates.

“This information needs to get into the public domain so that people understand the consequences of their diet choices.”

AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan

Report Finds Contamination In Most Chicken Sold In U.S.

Report Finds Contamination In Most Chicken Sold In U.S.

New York (AFP) – Almost all of the raw chicken sold in the U.S. contains potentially harmful bacteria such as salmonella and E.coli, according to an analysis by Consumer Reports published Thursday.

The magazine tested 316 raw chicken breasts in 26 states and “found potentially harmful bacteria lurking in almost all of the chicken, including organic brands,” it said.

The analysis found that chicken from the four largest brands (Perdue, Pilgrim’s, Sanderson Farms, Tyson) “contained worrisome amounts of bacteria” and that more than half the chicken breasts were tainted with fecal contaminants that can cause blood and urinary-tract infections.

The research analyzed chicken from major brands, including Wal-Mart Stores, Whole Foods, Kroger and Trader Joe’s.

The magazine’s study was already underway this fall when there was an outbreak of salmonella that government investigators linked to chicken sold by three Foster Farm plants. In that case, some 389 people were infected, the magazine said.

“What’s going on with the nation’s most popular meat?” queried the well-known consumer publication, pointing out that Americans buy an estimated 83 pounds of chicken a person each year.

The magazine said more than 48 million people fall sick each year due to food tainted with salmonella, campylobacter, E. coli, and other contaminants, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that “more deaths were attributed to poultry than to any other commodity.”

The CDC has studied outbreaks from 1998 to 2008.

Bacteria from contaminated chicken is also problematic because it can spread easily through “cross-contamination” in the kitchen if consumers touch other surfaces, the magazine said.

Recommendations for averting contamination include washing one’s hands immediately after touching raw chicken and cooking the chicken to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

A statement by the National Chicken Council said the Consumer Reports analysis looked at a sample size of only .0004 percent of chicken sold on any given day.

“Americans eat about 160 million servings of chicken every single day, and 99.99 percent of those servings are consumed safely,” the council said. “Unfortunately, this particular statistic was left out of the ‘in depth’ piece recently published by Consumer Reports.”

While bacteria cannot be entirely eliminated, smart handling can ensure food safety, the council said. “All bacteria, antibiotic resistant or not, is killed by proper cooking,” the council added.

Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Photo: Stan Honda via AFP