Arkansas-based poultry producer Tyson Foods Inc. has cut out gentamicin, a key human antibiotic, from its hatcheries.
The US' largest chicken producer told Reuters that gentamicin and other similar antibiotics had been removed from its 35 hatcheries by October 1, 2014. However, it made no mention of what drugs were used at the hatcheries.
The poultry firm views the new policy as "a significant first step toward our goal of reducing the use of antibiotics that are also used in human medicine".
The US Food and Drug Administration regards the antibiotic gentamicin as vital in human medicine.
Rival poultry producer and hatcheries Perdue Farms declared that it had stopped using antibiotics, such as gentamicin, last summer as it wanted "to move away from conventional antibiotic use" because of "growing consumer concern and our own questions about the practice".
Antibiotics have been used by meat companies to promote quick growth as well as fight diseases and infections, while hatcheries commonly use gentamicin even in fertilised eggs, accept veterinarians and poultry producers. For quite some time now, the poultry industry had been under immense pressure to stop injecting antibiotics into healthy livestock.
McDonald's, whose major supplier is Tyson Foods, declared that it will stop purchasing antibiotic-reared chicken for its US outlets.
Speaking to Reuters, Tyson said it was also testing medically-important alternative antibiotics for its chicken farms after the hatchlings are brought there. Tyson's website claimed that the antibiotics used on the poultry farms were not to promote growth but only for prevention or treatment of diseases after being prescribed by a veterinarian.
Since 2011, Tyson has cut down using antibiotics in its hatcheries and farms by 84%. A company statement emphasised that the "vast majority of antibiotics used to raise our chickens are never used in humans".
Although using antibiotics in livestock is legal, overuse could bring out the risk of creating supposed superbugs that could develop resistance to the drugs used in treating humans. Last year, rampant use of antibiotics in US poultry firms was discovered, more than the amount stipulated by regulators.
