The company said it was late to shift away from human antibiotics because it had to persuade suppliers of bone-in chickens it uses to make the change.
KFC, owned by Louisville, Kentucky-based Yum Brands Inc., has more than 4,000 restaurants in the U.S.
In 2016, the activist group Chain Reaction II said livestock animals are routinely fed potentially risky antibiotics "to help them survive and make them grow faster in unsanitary, crowded and stressful conditions". Leading medical experts warn that we must stop overuse of antibiotics in human medicine and animal agriculture, or else the life-saving drugs we rely on to treat common infections and enable medical procedures could increasingly stop working.
Other fast food companies have made similar pledges, including McDonald's.
Yet in a recent report card on restaurants' antibiotics policies, KFC was one of 16 chains that scored a failing grade.
While KFC is pledging to cut out just some antibiotics - namely those that are also found in human medicine - Chic-Fil-A has promised to remove all antibiotics from its poultry by 2019. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, 42 percent of the US chicken industry has now committed to reducing the use of antibiotics. And McDonald's Corp. has stopped using chickens raised with antibiotics important to human medicine for its McNuggets and chicken sandwiches. Eleven of the 15 largest restaurant chains in the US have committed to ending the use of antibiotics on some level.
Yankees expect Gary Sanchez (biceps) to miss four weeks
It's more flexible now. "Every day (it's) feeling a little bit better and that's what you hope for". Greg Bird did not play for a third straight day, recovering from flu-like symptoms.
KFC will only buy chicken free of human antibiotics by the end of 2018.
With the move, KFC became the last major chicken restaurant to join the fight to against unsafe superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics.
U.S. PIRG and its partners - including Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Consumers Union, Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) - delivered a letter signed by more than eighty consumer, health, and environmental organizations to Yum! It should also open the door for smaller chains to follow KFC's move, he told Reuters.
KFC said the move would not cause a price increase, but Hochman said that growers will have to raise more chickens to meet size demands, USA Today reported. Previously, the company said it would eliminate artificial colors and flavors from all core products by the end of 2018.
KFC worked with more than 2,000 farms, a lot of them family-owned and managed, in a dozen states to implement the new policy.
The company wanted eggs to be cleaner before they hatch and now asks farmers to rub them with sanitizing wipes before shipping them to a Tyson facility, said Bill Hewat, Tyson's director of global veterinarian services, during a tour of a Missouri hatchery past year.
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