antibiotics in chicken (1)

Three US NGOs have filed a lawsuit against Sanderson Farms, which is the third largest chicken producer in the USA for falsely describing its chicken as "100% natural". Traces of antibiotics, steroids, growth hormones banned in chicken production and even ketamine, a powerful anaesthetic with anti-depressive and hallucinogenic properties, were found on multiple occasions during inspections of the company's processing plants by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Determining whether a product can be labelled 100% natural is approved by the USDA, which grants that label to a product if it contains "no artificial ingredient or added colour and is only minimally processed"—meaning that the product was processed in a way that does not "fundamentally alter the product." Advertising and marketing, however, does not require pre-market USDA approval, but the company has  not only played up the notion that its chickens are "free of antibiotics before they leave the farm" in its television commercials, but has also mocked other companies, which advertise their poultry as lacking added hormones or steroids on the grounds that it's "illegal" to give such products to chickens.

Read the full article at: 100% natural chicken challenged in the US

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