Informant38

Major fast food companies, including Subway and KFC, have recently said they will not buy chicken fed medically important antibiotics for nontherapeutic purposes. But McDonald's, the second largest U.S. chicken buyer after KFC, has adopted no new policy.

"If McDonald's wants to improve public health, it should stop contributing to the unnecessary use of millions of pounds of antibiotics each year," said Michael Khoo, an analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Our antibiotics deserve a break today."

UCS estimates that the poultry industry feeds 10.5 million pounds of antibiotics and related drugs to healthy chickens every year to promote growth and to compensate for unsanitary conditions on factory farms. This overuse of antibiotics in poultry contributes to the loss of efficacy of drugs that are used to treat serious diseases in people, including food poisoning.