Christine Daugherty is almost irrepressibly energetic.
It’s a trait that serves her well in her role as vice president of sustainable food production at Tyson Foods of Springdale. Tyson announced in April its goal of eliminating the use of human-use antibiotics in its broiler chicken flocks by 2017.
Broiler chickens are those raised for human consumption. Many in the medical community fear that the use of human antibiotics in food animals can lead to the proliferation of bacteria that are resistant to those antibiotics, making them ineffective for people.
Daugherty said Tyson has formed working groups for beef, pork and turkey to discuss antibiotic use in those segments. The pork committee met in June, beef is scheduled to meet this month, and turkey is tentatively scheduled for the fall.
The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention said it conservatively estimates that antibiotic-resistant bacteria cause 2 million illnesses and 23,000 direct deaths annually in the United States. Donnie Smith, CEO of Tyson, attended the White House Forum on Antibiotic Stewardship in early June and said governmental support of research would be “helpful.”
“We know that antibiotic resistance is a global concern,” Daugherty said. “What Tyson Foods is doing is essentially trying to be part of the solution to reduce antibiotic resistance. There is some confusion. It’s not reducing antibiotics. It’s a component.
“What we’re trying to do is make sure the antibiotics we have today will kill those bacteria that may make you and I sick. That’s going to take a joint effort between the agriculture and the medical community.”
Daugherty said Tyson has already reduced its use of human-use antibiotics in its broiler flocks by 80 percent since 2011, and the company has eliminated such drugs in its 35 broiler hatcheries. Tyson’s public announcement came on the heels of other high-profile announcements such as McDonald’s — of which Tyson is the major supplier of chicken — saying in March that within two years it would not serve chicken products that had been given human-use antibiotics.
Ed Fryar, the CEO of Ozark Mountain Poultry, said the current trend toward eliminating human-use antibiotics is historic.
“I think the last half of 2014 and the first half of 2015 will someday be looked back on as a watershed period for the use of antibiotics in chickens in the U.S.,” Fryar said. “When McDonald’s says they’re moving in that direction and Tyson says they’re moving in that direction, you put those two together and I think we’re just a few years away from antibiotic-free or at least greatly reduced usage of antibiotics in the mainstream of the United States.”
Human-use antibiotics can help keep chicken healthier and grow bigger at less cost, which is why their use became prevalent in the poultry industry. There is not one alternative to human-use antibiotics, Daugherty and other experts said. It will take methods such as improved animal husbandry, better growing environments and the use of probiotics — like yogurt from the store you eat for “gut health,” Daugherty said.
“Addressing the challenge issue, really what we need is more alternatives, whether it’s an enzyme or botanical or probiotic,” Smith said at the White House forum. “We need more research on what these alternatives might be.”
Smith said in the Tyson news release that reducing human-use antibiotics should not affect the company’s financials. Smaller poultry companies have less of an edge in the economics of scale.
Counting Chickens
Ozark Mountain Poultry of Rogers sells antibiotic-free chicken that it gets from its own internal production or from an outside supplier who agreed to raise the chickens the way OMP demanded. Fryar said his company processes 600,000 chickens a week, a fraction of the millions Tyson does.
“Those things are all very effective,” Fryar said of the known alternatives. “That’s exactly what we’re doing. Your animal husbandry, if you’re going to be truly antibiotic-free, has to be better than average. If you just have typical animal husbandry, you’re going to have serious animal disease problems.
“It’s more expensive to raise an antibiotic-free bird than it is to raise a bird that you feed subtherapeutic levels of antibiotics. All of that costs a little more money: a little more here and a little more there. It adds up over time.”
Fryar said when he first started OMP he bought whatever chickens were available before becoming antibiotic-free two years ago when he was able to vertically integrate his business. He said having antibiotic-free chicken products is an important choice to provide consumers who are willing to pay more for it.
More important than that, Fryar said, antibiotic resistance is a global concern. He said OMP doesn’t process chickens that receive any antibiotic, regardless of whether it is human-use or animal-use.
“To some extent, I guess it matters if it is a human-use antibiotic or just a strictly animal-use antibiotic, but to me antibiotic resistance is antibiotic resistance,” Fryar said. “The fewer antibiotics you use, the better off you are.”
It is a deft balancing act, as Tyson executives admit. Tyson is a global giant in the poultry industry and keeping millions of chickens healthy until they are processed is no easy task, with or without antibiotics.
“This is why we’ve given us a little bit of time so it is seamless,” Daugherty said. “We are sensitive to not only internal business issues but also external customer expectations. If we can slowly move, then there will be less disruption.”
Smith said at the forum it was a “very delicate” balance between animal welfare, global health concerns and keeping the chicken affordable for consumers. We can “be able to straddle that fence by finding more alternatives,” Smith said.
Fryar and Smith agree that animal husbandry is critical, as well as raising birds in a healthy environment to avoid illnesses in the first place. Smith said modern chicken house technology is “phenomenal: in regards to health.
“The environmental impact has a huge impact on health and keeping costs low,” Smith said. “There’s absolutely a business case for that. Anything we can do to reduce concern on the consumer’s behalf of the food they choose … is good for all of our businesses.”
In the Tyson news release, Smith said even after the company goes human-use antibiotic free, it would still reserve the right to use whatever drugs necessary under veterinarian care to keep its birds healthy. Fryar said OMP has not had to make that decision but if it did, it would use whatever drug the vet told the company was needed for the birds’ health.
“If you don’t have any antibiotics that little bit of an issue in a chicken house can become a bigger issue,” Fryar said. “The secret is to make sure you do things right on the front end.”
Daugherty said Tyson doesn’t have all the answers to antibiotic resistance but wants to be part of the solution. She said a lot of people in agriculture, medicine and education have been working on the problem for a long time.
“We know partnership is critical,” Daugherty said. “We want to be at the table. It’s truly an effort that is going to take everybody pulling on the rope at the same time.”
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