January 30, 2019

KFC's supply chain now produces "100%" of chickens without antibiotics
 

KFC, the famous fast food chicken brand, has declared this month that the company's US supply chain achieved a 100% of chickens raised without antibiotics that are critical to human health, Forbes reported. 

The announcement was made together with another which revealed the restaurant chain's plans to make its plastic-based, consumer-facing packaging recoverable or reusable across its global systems by 2025. The milestone represents a fulfillment of a pledge first announced in April 2017.

In addition, KFC has become the first major chicken chain to extend the commitment to its antibiotics-free goal to bone-in chicken which takes up around 60% of the menu mix in the chain's US market.   

"A significant portion of the menu is chicken-on-the-bone, meaning we purchase whole chicken versus breast meat. Restaurants selling only boneless chicken can purchase meat from a variety of sizes and specs, whereas KFC has very specific standards on spec size and weight of the whole chickens we purchase," said Jon Hixson, vice president of government relations and global citizenship at KFC's parent company, Yum! Brands.

KFC's antibiotics policies had previously received a poor rating from advocacy groups less than three years earlier. Its pledge to ensure chickens raised without antibiotics is a tipping point for the chicken industry, Lena Brook, director of food campaigns at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said. 

"Prior, NRDC estimated that about 40% of the US chicken industry was already raising animals using responsible antibiotics practices or was pledged to do so. Now, over half of the industry is under commitment," Brook said.

"I expect KFC's achievement to have a positive ripple effect throughout the entire industry, especially among smaller scale producers that have yet to make public announcements."

- Forbes