Perdue’s Antibiotic-Free Chicken

choi

Stephanie Strom, Poultry's Cage Match; Perdue sharply cuts antibiotic use and jabs at its rivals. New York Times, Aug 1, 2015.

Excerpt in the window of print:  In ads, a company [Perdue Farms] emphasizes its early efforts to reduce its use of antibiotics.

Quote:

“It took perdue roughly a decade to perfect the raising of chickens without antibotics of any kind, and now it has reached a tipping point: More than half of the chicken it sells can be labeled ‘no antibiotics ever,’ a first for a major poultry company.

"the only [poultry] meat that can legally be labeled 'antibiotic free' under federal regulation is from animals raised with neither human antibiotics nor ionophores, and many poultry companies have niche products lines that meets that standard. Tyson, for instance, sells such chicken under the NatureRaised Farms brand, but that currently accounts for what a spokesman described as a ‘small’ portion of the company’s overall chicken sales.

“Perdue will use the phrase ‘no antibiotics ever’ on its Harvestland and Simply Smart brands of chicken products, as well as on Perdue Perfect Portions. Today, Harvestland is a $200 million business for Perdue.

“in 2011 FPP Farms, which owns Perdue, bought Coleman Natural Foods, a producer of organic and ‘natural’ meats, overnight adding pork and beef [and organic to boot] to its product lines for the first time.

My comment:
(a) Salisbury, Maryland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salisbury,_Maryland
(The population was 30,343 at the 2010 census)
(b)
(i) Perdue Farms (based in  Salisbury, Maryland; founded in 1920 by Arthur Perdue with his wife, Pearl Perdue)  Wikipedia
(ii) The English and Irish surname: "from Old French par Dieu ‘by God’

(c) In quotation 3, FPP stands for Frank Perdue (born Franklin Parsons "Frank" Perdue; 1920 – 2005), son of Arthur and father of the current CEO Jim Perdue.

choi

(d) This is a long report. After reading its, a reader may be forgiven for being confused. I did some research:
(i) The major pathogen in farmed chickens is coccidia, which is the name of a subclass. See table in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coccidia
(a subclass of microscopic, spore-forming, single-celled obligate intracellular parasites [protozoa]; commonly found in dogs' and cats’ intestines)
(ii) the life cycle: in chickens too, coccidia eggs pass alongside feces, which, once swallowed by a new host, germinate and proliferate in the intestines.  
(iii)
(A) “Coccidia infect every poultry house worldwide. Eradication is nearly impossible. The parasites are very prolific [ie, with ‘high reproductive rate’].”  The Poultry Site, undated.  So the trick is not to prevent infection, but to forestall buildup --too much--of coccidia in individual chickens.
(B) "Coccidia are almost universally present in poultry-raising operations, but clinical disease occurs only after ingestion of relatively large numbers of sporulated oocysts by susceptible birds." Merck Veterinary Manual, undated.
(C) "Each species [of coccidia] is specific to a given host" so coccidia from a dog or cat can not infect a chicken.
(iv) drug mechanism:
(A) H David Chapman, How ionophores control coccidiosis. Poultry Health Today, November/December 2014
poultryhealthtoday.com/ionophores-control-coccidiosis/
(“The first ionophore to be used for this purpose was monensin. * * * Technically, ionophores are antibiotics because they are produced as a by-product of bacterial fermentation. * * * Ionophores are not used in human medicine and, therefore, cannot contribute to perceived issues relating to drug resistance in man”)
(B) monensin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monensin
(“Monensin is a polyether antibiotic isolated from Streptomyces cinnamonensis” --view diagram)

(e)
(i) Antibiotics Position Statement. Perdue, July 8, 2015
http://perduefarms.com/News_Room ... osition%20Statement

Quote:

"we are proud to report the following:

"• The percentage of flocks that received a human antibiotic for compassionate disease treatment dropped from five percent of our total to four percent. Those targeted treatments were typically for three days or less. In those rare instances, our veterinarians prescribe the antibiotic that has the least importance in human health, yet is effective in treating the flock.
   
"• In the past year, the percentage of our chicken flocks receiving animal-only antibiotics [ionophores] dropped from 60% to 42%. That means 52% of our chickens are now raised with no antibiotics of any kind.
   
"• All of the pork we sell is raised with no antibiotics ever, and our beef is sourced from animals that were never treated with antibiotics.

* Thus the major achievement in the Position Statement is ionophore use in chicken “dropped from 60% to 42%.”  In other words: “More than half of the chicken it sells can be labeled ‘no antibiotics ever.’ ”  Quotation 1 above.  Chicken meat that can not meet the standard is sold without the label “antibiotics free.”
(ii) “All of our antibiotic-free chicken, turkey and hogs are fed an all-vegetarian diet with no animal by-products.”  Perdue, undated

(f) How Perdue achieves the milestone (>50% are antibiotic free)?  Paragraphs 1 and 2 of the NYT report says incubation facility are redesigned and chicken eggs are sent in “with none of the traces of feces or feathers that were common in the past. They will; move into [incubation] chambers that are disinfected daily with hydrogen peroxide.
(g) There is no need to read the rest of the NYT report.