In coming months the fast-food giant Chick-Fil-A will be taking on a less strict stance on their pledge regarding antibiotics. Chick-Fil-A follows other large food companies like Tyson Foods, who added some antibiotics back into their products last year.
From the most strict “no antibiotics ever” a pledge intended to help lessen human antibiotic resistance due to drugs and medication used in the production of livestock. To what is currently known as “no antibiotics important to human medicine” which lessens the ban on antibiotics to medications that are frequently used to treat humans.
The “no antibiotics important to human medicine” pledge also limits the use of animal antibiotics used to treat sick animals, and will be utilized by Chick-Fil-A in Spring 2024.
While it may be more relaxed, the new pledge is still important in keeping Chick-Fil-A customers safe from drug resistance. As livestock producers add some drugs and medication to the livestocks diet in order to increase product resulting in a more profitable business for the producer.
In turn the drugs used in the practice may cause drug resistance for human antibiotics, making it that much more difficult to cure some diseases. Drug resistance is a medical phenomenon that weakens the effectiveness of antibiotics for human diseases.
