Last year, McDonalds Canada announced that it would source only chicken raised “without antibiotics that are important to human medicine” by the end of 2018. McDonalds’ decision came at a time of global concern over antibiotic resistance and the rise of superbugs that cannot be treated with current antibiotics.
Other large food companies, including Tyson, Walmart and Costco, are fol- lowing suit, but have not set a deadline. That may be because no one is sure how suppliers can meet the demand for drug-free chicken. At present, only about 11 per cent of overall chicken production in the U.S. is antibiotic free, according to IRI, a Chicago based research firm. That number has been growing, but produc- tion of antibiotic-free birds would have to more than triple to meet the needs of just these four customers.
The chicken industry is now scrambling to come up with protocols to raise “clean” birds but it is working with a very difficult subject. For the last half century, poultry scientists in the genetics department of the poultry conglomerates have designed a meat bird that is ready for the plate 33 days after it hatches. But rapid weight gain takes a toll on the bird’s physiology. Meat birds are effectively sterile. When raised in industrial circumstances, they are unable to walk more than five feet by the time they reach maturity if allowed to grow past the deadline or the assembly line, the bird starts to lose weight again and will eventually die.
The people in white coats have also developed a hen that will sit in one place and lay 300 eggs a year. Poultry scientists are looking for some way to protect both meat birds and laying hens from a host of diseases, but the modern chicken has been so highly hybridized and is confined in such high numbers that raising one without some sort of drug therapy inevitably leads to higher mortality and higher costs. It is unlikely the industry will find a miraculous fix in time to meet McDonalds deadline. And it is even less likely to be made available to the backyard producer.
Removing preventative antibiotics from feed inevitably leads to higher mortality. The chicken barns that are trying it are reporting significant jumps in bird deaths — to eight per cent or higher. Producers hope to recoup these losses through a premium price on ‘naturally raised’ birds, but they may be trading a feed additive problem for an animal welfare issue. At the moment, there is no practical way to raise large numbers of animals in confinement that doesn’t compromise their lives in some way.
Chickens, like humans, were never designed to share the same space with thousands of their colleagues. Any attempt to do so requires constant vigilance and intervention. Viruses and bacteria thrive in the warm humid conditions of a chicken barn. Light levels that encourage activity will also encourage aggression. Freedom to range also means the freedom to pick up other birds pathogens and cannibalize each other. Rapid weight gain challenges the physical structure and immunities of any organism.
Gene-splicing offers the most promising option for producing a virus and bacteria resistant chicken, but that would be a bridge too far for consumers. None of the food companies will say that they are seriously considering a GMO solution to address the antibiotic issue.
Are ionophores an antibiotic?
I have been feeding medicated crumbles to my day-old chicks since I can remember. The feed contains amprolium, an ionophore used around the world in chick- ens, turkey, pigs, cattle and sheep to control coccidia. Ionophores make up 35 per cent of the antibiotics used in agriculture. Coccidia are a protozoan parasite that weak- ens the bird’s immune system and makes it susceptible to a host of other infections. One coccidia oocyst (egg) can multiply to 500,000 in a few days. Amprolium in the chick starter controls the population of coccidia in the chick’s gut until the bird develops a tolerance for them. Sheep, cattle and pigs are all susceptible to coccidia ‘blooms’ and all are routinely fed ionophores in confinement operations, in some cases right up to the date of slaughter.
I am told I can probably get away without medicated starter if I keep the brooder full of fresh shavings and wash the water and feed troughs frequently. But I have seen enough coccidia infections that I would rather not take the risk. Because I move the chicks into pasture huts after three weeks and move the chickens to new ground every couple of days, I have never lost more than one or two birds out of a batch of 50. (A raccoon did eat one chicken through the one-inch square mesh overnight, leaving only a beak and two feet inside the wire. Electric rope around the hut encouraged the raccoon to spend his nights elsewhere.)
The industry insists that the use of ionophores poses no health risk because they are not used in human medicine. And they argue that ionophores are not really an antibiotic.
Antibiotic or anticoccidial?
Europe announced a ban on livestock antibiotics in 2006 but found the only way to accomplish it in practice was to re-classify ionophores as an anticoccidial. In the U.S., the FDA still considers ionophores an antibiotic. Canadian and U.S. producers complain that their EU counterparts promote their products as ‘raised without antibiotics’ but are using exactly the same medications. By European standards I could claim my birds are raised without antibiotics, but it is really a question of semantics.
There is a vaccine. Birds are sprayed with a dose of a non-reproducing strain of coccidia which stimulates the bird’s natural defenses against the parasite and helps prevent a coccidia bloom. But the vaccine is only available in 1000 bird batches. Unless you can convince your hatchery to use it, it remains impractical for the backyard producer.
McDonalds’ last effort to go antibiotic-free in 2003 broke down in a similar debate about definitions — the difference between ‘prophylactic’ and ‘therapeutic.’ The chicken industry offered to stop using antibiotics as a preventive measure and apply them only when the chickens got sick. But without antibiotics, the chickens always got sick, so the chickens ended up being treated therapeutically and the end result was the same. No one disputes the principle that sick animals must be treated, even in operations that are committed to drug-free feeding. The health and the welfare of the animal must take precedence. But what advantage is there to the chicken or the consumer if removing medications from the diet just leads to more sick and dead birds?
Antibiotics that are used in human medicine and are approved for use in animal feed are designed to pass through the digestive system and not be absorbed into the flesh of the animal. Industry experts have insisted for years that the risk to humans from this practice is negligible. But public tolerance for medications in animal feed is rapidly fading and industry spokespeople generally accept that practices need to change. The challenge is to find a program that meets consumer expectations without tripling the price of chicken.
Bacteria eating microbes
In the lab, some limited progress is being made in the development of probiotics, prebiotics, enzymes and bacteriophages, tiny micro-organisms that populate the gut of the chicken and boost its immune system in various ways. Bacteriophages are bacteria eating microbes first observed 120 years ago by a medical doctor who was battling an outbreak of cholera in India. He noticed that colonies of cholera bacteria that thrived in tap water quickly died when mixed with water taken directly from the Ganges, a river long celebrated by the people of India for its healing powers. He had no idea what X-factor in the water was killing the bacteria. In 1917, Felix d’Herelle a French-Canadian microbiologist working in Paris isolated phages from chicken feces and cured an outbreak of chicken typhus. He went on to cure a number of patients of dysentery and stopped a cholera outbreak in India by dropping phage solutions down village wells. A phage ‘boom’ took hold in Europe during the 1920s. D’Herelle was nominated ten times for the Nobel Prize but never received one. The results from phage treatments proved difficult to replicate and when the first antibiotics appeared in the 1940s, research into the mysterious X-factor was abandoned. It wasn’t until 1951 that phages were finally isolated and identified with an electron microscope but, because they mutated so quickly and unpredictably, they remained a scientific curiosity. Now that antibiotic resistance is becoming a widespread problem in the 21st century, the spotlight has returned to bacteriophage research.
Phages occur in seawater and also in the soil . . . a fact that might help to explain why my 50 chickens don’t need medication after three weeks of age. It could also help to explain why I have never given a shot of penicillin to any of the three pigs or two steers I fatten in the barn- yard each summer over the last 30 years. Could it be that they are finding bacteriophages or some other X-factor out there in the soil?
Almost everyone agrees that more research is urgently needed into botanical substitutes . . . everyone, that is, except the pharmaceutical industry. The major drug companies have actually down-sized their antibiotic research programs over the last 20 years, preferring to place their bets on more profitable products such as anti-depressants and cancer medications. (New York Times Mar 8, 2016) They are also wary of investing in fringe ‘herbal’ treatments that might be difficult to patent and monopolize. Feed companies are the main sponsors of research into antibiotic substitutes and they are not talking about their work publicly. Any solution they come up with could be a game-changer for the industry and very profitable. It will take a major public health scare before significant resources are diverted back to antibiotic research. That scare may not be far off. In the spring of 2016, researchers found evidence that MRC-1, a new gene that makes bacteria resistant to antibiotics, has migrated to North America, from China where it was first discovered only a year before. MRC-1 is suspected to have evolved in chicken and pig barns where the antibiotic colistin is routinely used as a feed additive. Colistin is a last-resort drug used in patients with serious infections and experts fear that it will soon become ineffective. Losing colistin from the medicine cabinet does not mean we will be out of antibiotics, but we are inching closer to that day, one resistant bacterium at a time.
Density is the key
Chickens, like humans, were never designed to share the same space with thousands of their colleagues.
My chickens are not a significant source of cheap protein. Chicks cost $2.00 each, eat $3.00 worth of feed and cost $5.00 to process. Capital costs and gas to get them across the province to one of the last poultry processing plants that will handle small orders push them well over the $12.00 mark. Loblaw’s sells a chicken cooked in the deli counter for $9.99. And pasture huts only work during clement weather. Still, I can claim in good conscience that my birds are relatively antibiotic free. (Just my relatives are getting the benefits.) The industry dismisses my pasture huts, saying there is no possible way to feed the world affordable chicken using my system.
But most small producers start with one clear ad- vantage over the barns. Because we are not trying to produce cheap protein we have more options. We raise a few chickens in the backyard for the freezer, just the way our grandmothers did. Some of us have forgotten that Grandma’s heritage roosters took six months to grow out to roasting size, not 33 days like today’s Frankenchicken from the hatchery. And her roosters were probably a lot chewier than today’s supermarket bird. But we have a lot more freedom to adjust density, living conditions and inputs in a way that balances the health and welfare of a chicken with our need to eat them with a clear conscience.
- Dan Needles