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Saturday, November 04, 2017

'Big Chicken' Connects Poultry Farming To Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

The chicken for sale at your local grocery store isn't like the chicken your grandparents used to eat. They're bigger and more "breasty," says public health journalist Maryn McKenna — and that's by design.

"In the United States, we much prefer to eat white meat, and so we have bred chickens and genetically redesigned chickens in order for them to have a lot of breast meat," McKenna says. She attributes the change in poultry to factors like precision breeding, hormones and nutrition, but adds, "Antibiotics started this process."

Many large poultry farms feed antibiotics to their chickens in an effort to prevent disease. But McKenna says that humans who eat those chickens are at risk of developing not only antibiotic-resistant gastrointestinal infections, but also urinary tract infections as well. She chronicles the use of antibiotics in the poultry industry in her new book, Big Chicken.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

They've stopped giving antibiotice to chickens long ago.

Anonymous said...

no more antibiotics given to chickens. period!

Anonymous said...

You fools can continue to eat antibiotic free chickens.
I’ll keep eating the healthy ones.

Because without antibiotics, those chickens are riddled with disease organisms.

Anonymous said...

So you would rather get something that we have no antibiotics to treat?

jeff said...

It is now matter of past, no more antibiotics are given to chickens.