Dive Brief:
- Cargill says it's ending the use of growth-promoting antibiotics for turkeys in its supply chain.
- The agribusiness giant, which sells turkey at retail under the Honeysuckle White and Shady Brook Farms brands, said hormone-free turkeys will be available by Thanksgiving.
- The announcement comes several months after the FDA launched an initiative to reduce the use of antibiotics in farm animals.
Dive Insight:
The folks at the Centers for Disease Control must be pleased by this development. Researchers there have long argued that using antibiotics to make bigger animals is putting all of us at risk. In a report published last year, the CDC stated that overexposure to antibiotics through the consumption of animal products is increasing consumers' resistance to antibiotic medicine.
Feeding antibiotics to healthy animals may make for bigger profit margins, but it also makes for big problems. And as Dutch farmers have taught us, it's not necessary.