Chick-fil-A changes to chicken with antibiotics

Chick-fil-A changed their chicken supply from chicken with no antibiotics (NAE) to chicken with No Antibiotics Important to Human Medicine (NAIHM) earlier this spring, meaning more of the company's food will have antibiotics in it. But most college students are unaware of what they are consuming.

“There is a small set of antibiotics that Chick-fil-A uses when animals are sick,” Paul Ebner, the interim head of the Department of Animal Sciences, said. “These are not antibiotics used for humans.”

Across the poultry industry, there has been a decreasing trend in antibiotic usage over the last 15 years, Ebner said.

Chick-fil-A’s recent antibiotic usage has been implemented nationwide, including the restaurant on Purdue’s campus. But not all Purdue students were aware of this change.

“I would probably be more hesitant to eat at Chick-fil-A,” Morgan Milburn, a sophomore in biomedical health sciences, said. “But I don’t eat meat very often anyway.”

Lots of students order Chick-fil-A for lunch and dinner because they accept meal swipes. But even after becoming aware of this recent change, some students prefer to wait for more information before making changes to their dietary choices.

“I will probably need to do more research before changing my dining habits,” Sai Aiswarya, a sophomore in computer science, said.

This change will affect the health and diets of college students minimally, Ebner said.

“You can’t ever rule out an impact,” Ebner said. “Everything has an impact. But the drugs that they’re using, and when they’re using them, I wouldn’t expect it to have much of an impact at all.”

He said Chick-fil-A made it clear that they will not use antibiotics for performance, in the context of improving feed efficiency, something the FDA stopped about a decade ago.

“Chickens grow really fast, and they’re really big,” Ebner said. “There’s some misconception that they have steroids and hormones, but there are simply not any growth-promoting steroids or hormones available for chickens. These chickens have become bigger because of selective breeding, but also improvements in nutrition and housing.”

The Exponent reached out to the Chick-fil-A on campus but they declined to comment.