Tyson Foods, one of the country’s largest chicken producers, announced plans on Tuesday to phase out its use of antibiotics.
The company’s decision comes on the heels of McDonald’s announcement last month that it would stop serving chicken treated with most antibiotics in two years.
McDonald’s is a major buyer of poultry, and Tyson is a top supplier for the fast-food chain.
Other restaurants, including Chick-fil-A, also have announced their intention to serve antibiotic-free chicken in coming years.
The trend that reflects consumers’ growing concerns that the use of antibiotics in food could lead to the spread of deadly drug-resistant bacteria.
Tyson plans to eliminate human antibiotics from its broiler chicken flocks by September 2017, according to a statement from the company’s president and CEO Donnie Smith
“Antibiotic resistant infections are a global health concern,” Smith said in the statement. “We’re confident our meat and poultry products are safe, but want to do our part to responsibly reduce human antibiotics on the farm so these medicines can continue working when they’re needed to treat illness.”
Smith said Tyson will continue to treat sick chickens under veterinary supervision.
“One of our core values is to serve as responsible stewards of animals – we will not let sick animals suffer,” he said. Tyson also is looking for ways to reduce human antibiotic use in cattle, pigs and turkeys.
Antibiotics that are medically important to human health already are “minimally used when raising chickens,” said Tom Super, a spokesman for the Council, an industry group.
Super said chicken producers have been working with the Food and Drug Administration, farmers and veterinarians for two years on a voluntary plan to phase out the use of such antibiotics.
By 2016, he said, such antibiotics “will be used exclusively under the supervision and prescription of a veterinarian.”
Advocates for animal welfare and food safety greeted Tyson’s announcement on Tuesday with caution, warning that it is not enough to end the routine use of antibiotics in chicken without fixing the birds’ poor living conditions and weakened genetics.
“Antibiotics have been administered continuously as a crutch to prop up sickly birds who suffer from a lack of space, high levels of stress and poor sanitation; the health of these birds can only be expected to get worse without those drugs if environmental changes are not made,” said the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Center for Food Safety, in a statement.