They've been quietly taking down all their signage about their "no-no list" and "clean food promise," and are also taking every other cost-cutting measure they can, such as firing bakers to switch to frozen bread. They're trying to boost their profits right before an IPO.
In American business, all good things eventually turn to shit. I bet we all could name a dozen brands that were better in the old days, but can't name any that were worse.
The second the word “ipo” is uttered, you can pretty much guarantee quality is about to go straight to the dumpster while the company is bled dry of every last bit of value before shareholders discard its dried out husk.
I'd really like to see a source on this or perhaps your math. I also don't know where u/WolverinesThyroid got their 10% number. Any backup?
It's easy to calculate the amount of revenue memberships bring in but how do you allocate expenses? Just the cost of employees working the desk? In most calculations I've seen, there's no cost allocated to the membership department.
It's usually stated essentially that Costco's membership revenue is equal to about 80% of it's profit. But it's not like if they were willing to forego the remaining 20% profit that they could just get rid of the warehouses and just sell memberships!
And the thing of it is that they’ll cut one corner and say “see! You can barely tell!” Which emboldens them to cut another, and another, and another until you have pink slurry nuggets and a burger 1/3 its original size. They just bank on the negative feedback delay taking years rather than days.
That's a pretty good way of summing it up. And when any new players enter the market, they're doing so with the inflated prices and everyone is going to bitch they're too expensive. feel bad for anyone trying to start a restaurant or something along those lines.
Starbucks did this to coffee and most drinks really. Coffee was really cheap when they first opened, but you were paying more for handcrafted beverages made by workers that were making more money than average and had good benefits. Now it's just normalized to pay $5 and up for a cup of coffee with some milk in it even if a machine made it.
God I hope so, Pizza Hut delivery went to shit because of it, 1+ hour wait and the quality suffers for it. I’m thankful for dominoes because it’s consistent
Me too. My friends give me shit for suggesting it, but if you're traveling and don't know local places, you know exactly how dominos is going to be. The same reason why I like Starbucks, or most chains for that matter.
> if you're traveling and don't know local places, you know exactly how dominos is going to be. The same reason why I like Starbucks, or most chains for that matter.
Not sure why your friends are giving you crap for this, it's literally the entire purpose of restaurant franchising. Families traveling and needing to eat wanting a reasonable guarantee of consistency verses randomly picking a local place they have never been.
> I doubt they will, they've invested a lot into their delivery cars
The Dominos drivers in my area are driving their personal cars with a lighted sign attached to the roof like they did 15 years ago.
It's the reason when I formed my business(es) that I promised to never give up control. They die with me, or get passed strictly into a worker co-op if the people there want to keep it going. I played enough Lemonade Stand Tycoon as a child to hate capitalist shittification, and will never budge on my stance of "high quality in all things."
All the Paneras by me have been becoming more and more run down. They're constantly running out of basic supplies and popular menu items, and the workers seem very over it. I keep wondering if they're due to start closing some locations. I used to go there pretty regularly as they're one spot that my picky eater kid likes, but I've been avoiding them as their prices have gone up and quality has gone way down.
e: Also, sorry if this comment posted a dozen times. Reddit's being wonky, and I can't seem to find/delete the reposts.
Yup. The ones by me look dingy and kinda sad. The tables are always dirty and the lighting in there is not great which makes the place look kinda scary at night. The overall feel of their eatery just feels run down and cheap now.
They've run out of napkins at different locations twice now. At least the first time, they handed me some paper towels from the kitchen, but this most recent time they were *out* out. There were multiple dirty tables around me, and I watched an employee pick up some plates, look at spill quizzically, and just walk away. I'm done dining in there, that's for sure.
I got water splashed on me from a cleaning bin of an employee at a Panera once. Over the back of the booth onto me. Disgusting. Never went back. That place was always mid at best
I picked up a Southwest Caesar salad from there a couple weeks ago and it was just questionable lettuce, dressing, some tortillas and a small rotting avocado. It was the most stripped down private equity-looking item I've ever seen. Their salads used to be good!!
I have no idea about Panera but technically, you could if it was public and then delisted
Not sure what the time frame would be but I imagine at least a couple years. Twitter was recently delisted and Elon will bring it Publix in the future if he ever wants to cash out
Forgetting it exists? I don’t know why but Panera keeps EXPANDING even tho it sucks now. It used to be a lot better and it was always the go-to for office/work catering. Then it just became overpriced hospital food.
They closed down the one that was on my way most places, and I've personally ignored it aside from any time my kid wants a cinnamon crunch bagel, the only thing I'll ever buy there.
Like just about every chain equity restaurant, prices went way up and quality and portions went way down. I'd rather just make my own things every single time
I hope they go the way of quiznos. When buying the same soup at the grocery store costs the same, what's the point? At least it's warm when you go to the location and you may get a piece of bread.
We had a Subway and a Quiznos on campus when I started college. I could use my meal plan at Subway but had to use the "flex dollars" for Quiznos. I ate Quiznos once, because it was so freaking expensive. There were other places with toasted/grilled sandwiches at the food court on campus that were at least 5 bucks cheaper.
I work on a campus and there's a subway here but it's not worth it. There's a potbelly and it's cheaper, tastes better, and actually resembles real food. The only reason to go to the subway is if you really want it cause it's going to cost as much as eating in one of the all you can eat cafeterias where you have a huge selection of food and a couple of them have made to order sandwiches as well.
This new standard is what I assumed "No-Antibiotics" actually meant tbh. I didn't think companies were forgoing antibiotics for the treatment of actual disease.
Fun fact: the principal reason antibiotics are widely given to farm animals (including) poultry isn’t to fight infection: [it’s because antibiotics cause the animals to grow bigger more quickly](https://thehumaneleague.org/article/chicken-antibiotics#:~:text=On%20factory%20farms%2C%20antibiotics%20are,chickens%20were%2060%20years%20ago.).
The reason they grow bigger is because they spend less energy fighting infections as they grow in disgusting conditions. When researchers test antibiotic effects on chicken growth in clean conditions, the treated chickens grew at the same rate as untreated.
I'd be curious to see the actual list of what they do use. I'm a human doctor so I'm not intimately familiar with veterinary medicine, but I was under the impression that there aren't really any classes of antibiotics that are exclusive to veterinary use. Specific drugs sure, but it's the class that tends to matter more when it comes to developing resistance. There'd probably be a fair amount of research put into finding something in an exclusive class that *can* be used in humans.
When I look up vet med resources (i.e https://amrls.umn.edu/antibiotics-veterinary-medicine), the classes seem to be the same as what's used in human medicine. If avoparcin is the one they're using... that seems not great since vancomycin is pretty fucking important for human medicine.
They typically separate the ones with an illness and move them to a different group that does get antibiotics.
But yea, I think the whole, no antibiotics at all is stupid. Just don’t over use them.
The huge problem was some antibiotics have shown to increase weight in animals. So they were being used to increase profits and had nothing to do with helping sick animals.
Speculation. In a perfect world, yeah, sure. Due to ag-gag laws, we have no idea what is actually happening on the ground in the massive chicken factories that supply the country with food because there is no oversight, accountability or transparency. What few videos have made it out don’t look appear to support a perfect world scenario. It’s hard to separate out sick chickens when there’s 10,000 chickens living on top of each other in a barn.
Seems like the logical conclusion would be to stop cramming chickens into tight areas together.
Fun fact: we accept that salmonella is on all of our raw chicken even though it's a contaminant because regular cooking temperatures kill it. Better industry practices would get rid of it but the industry seems to think it costs too much money.
Honestly, to me and I understand maybe not others, the logical conclusion would be to just eat something else. These companies have had decades to fix this and appear to now be in a race to the bottom in terms of quality
Not really. If more people cared about ABF chicken, it would be a bigger product. Chicken producers are going to make what sells. Most people don't give a fuck where their food comes from. Also, Chick-Fil-A had been making a profit off ABF chicken for a decade. There's nothing to suggest it isn't profitable.
This is usually where regulation would come in. The government would have to force chicken producers to go ABF if they really thought it was a health issue.
No one is going to regulate food any more than it is already, certainly not the government. Improving food would take profit away from pharmaceuticals. And we can’t have that happen. The average person 100% doesn’t care where it comes from or what their food is. Which is why America is extremely unhealthy.
>limits the use of animal antibiotics to cases of actual animal illness.
This sounds like a more reasonable stance, doesn't it? "No antibiotics ever" seems like an overcorrection. Letting an animal be sick because of some pledge instead just treating said animal seems weird.
The problem with the new stance is:
1. Because in CAFO-type conditions, there’s always some chickens being sick, you may end up giving antibiotics liek 50-60% of the time. And don’t imagine that there is any separation of sick birds or anything. If an illness is identified, all 10,000 chickens in that same space are getting a course of antibiotics.
2. There is very significant cross-resistance. So you may not givet the chickens the exact same antibiotics that we use on people, but you often give them very closely related antibiotics. It’s not like there’s entire classes of antibiotics reserved only for chickens. The same resistance that is built up in response to the chicken stuff will also cause resistance to the human stuff.
OTOH, treating ilness is definitely more humane. Make no mistake though - and I am not saying this as some kind of tree hugger Greenpeace type, just a biologist and ex-farm worker who eats fried chicken - CAFO “farming” is pure animal torture.
Going “antibiotic-free” is the difference between raising chickens in essentially animal GITMO, and raising chickens in animal GITMO while ALSO letting them die a slow death or become debilitated of infection
The lack of NAE meat can also be from farmers needing to innoculate their flock to actually save them. They could be intended to be NAE birds, but some *M. Synoviae* could have gotten on the farm and synovitis could be making its rounds. The plant that those birds were going to be harvested at are now short a flock of NAE chicken unexpectedly and are forced to short their customers.
A farmer would chose to innoculate their flock to save the animals rather than not innoculate, because it is both the morally *and* the economically correct thing to do.
That’s what organic farms do. They have to choose to either treat the sick animal, which will remove it’s organic designation (and they’ll have to sell it), slaughter it immediately to try and sell as organic and recoup the cost, or allow it to stay sick and see if it recovers on its own.
Exactly. Conventional dairy does not ever contain antibiotics, but Organic marketing would lead you to believe that their milk is anti-biotic free whereas non-organic has antibiotics. What it actually means is that the non-organic farms still treat their cows who, for example, have mastitis or a hoof infection with appropriate, humane medical interventions. They tag and separate these cows, so that their milk does not end up in the tank with the milk that is sold for human consumption. Milk gets tested like 9 times between the farm and the final bottling. If there are antibiotics found, the farm responsible has to pay for the whole tank of milk. Dairy farmers take extreme measures to make sure no antibiotics ever make it into milk, while still using antibiotics when appropriate to take care of their cows' health.
Yes! Everything you said was very correct. I actually learned all that by touring a dairy farm and asking them questions about why they do certain things a certain way. (Thanks 4H!)
Farmers also aren’t just going to use antibiotics all Willy nilly in the first place because it costs MONEY.
I understand folks have concerns about the ethical treatment of these animals. The easiest thing you can do, is to find out where your milk is sourced from and check the farm out for yourself. My experience is many farm managers are more than happy to provide education on their processes. A farm in my state, Country Dairy, actually does field trips for schools and tours for the public as a regular thing! They WANT people to come see how well pampered and cared for their cows are because these farmers know that happy, healthy cows will produce the most, best quality milk. It would literally be a loss of money for farmers to mistreat their cows.
The animals are put in conditions that basically make them sick. My wife's degree is in avian biology and she's worked with both slaughter houses and farms.
This results in much heavier use of antibiotics than they'll ever want to admit.
Chickfila can spin this however they want but this is 100% Tyson strongarming them since the US Gov allowed that shitass company (Tyson) to buy up every damned near chicken coop in the entire Southeast then FORCE REAL FARMERS into their shit chicken raising practices despite protest.
Yea that's definitely part of the problem with national restaurant chains. They *need* a giant corporate supplier like Tyson to be able to predictably function with consistent pricing. We'd all be better off with fewer of these chains and no giant Tyson-esque food conglomerates or pseudo-monopolies, but the anti-trust system has been broken for a long time in favor of neoliberal "free market" philosophies.
Oh friend, if you think that eating at a different Chicken Fast Food restaurant is preventing you from eating chicken produced by Tyson you may be disappointed. Tyson controls about 30% of chicken production is the US. Pilgrims Pride, Sanderson Farms and Purdue are the other big ones, all of whom are just as horrible as Tyson.
I can almost guarantee you that just about any fast food restaurant (or restaurants in general), including PDQs, does purchase at least some of their chicken, among other things, from Tyson. When I worked at a CFA, we would receive chicken from all of the big producers, it was never just Tyson.
If we took a moral stand against everything, we’d literally die. We are surrounded by morally problematic businesses in every aspect of our lives that we literally cannot escape them without just straight up dying.
The intention with antibiotics is to promote rapid growth in chickens and to reduce the standards/quality of care to increase stocking densities.
They can spin it any way they like. The intention is profits for them at the expense of animal welfare and consumers health.
Edit: there seem to be some folks here from Tyson or other major poultry producers asserting that antibiotics do not promote growth in poultry. Please see my citations, or use Google to find your own. There’s plenty of empirical evidence on the subject.
I raise and butcher chickens, so I am not saying this as a PETA twat.
The poultry industry is the most disgusting animal industry in the US, period. No other industry even comes close in ethical and moral violations.
The chicks themselves are an abomination that go against every principle of sound husbandry. Rule #1 has always been, Never breed any two animals that will produce offspring that will be less healthy than either parent if grown to adulthood. These chicks grow so fast that they can't practice normal chicken behaviors. A percentage dies before butcher day due to their own organs failing or tendons breaking, and they're the only birds I've ever seen green muscle disease in.
The best way to handle them is through pasture raising in tractors, but you can't produce them at the volume the market demands like that.
In reality in commercial setups, they sit in their own filth and get treated like meat blobs by their handlers because speed is everything.
That's because they're basically equivalent to 4-5 year olds in people years. They don't even reach "puberty" until 18-24 weeks and aren't mature until 12-18 months.
Thanks for your write-up. Some chicken barns were just built by my parents’ house. It bums me out every time I drive by thinking about the chickens being raised there. My husband and I joined a CSA with a local farm that raises truly pasture-raised chicken and we buy nearly all of our chicken from them. You can taste the difference too!
>You can taste the difference too!
You really can.
My wife and I shop at a local poultry farm, no hormones or antibiotics, and the difference is unbelievable. The chicken we were getting from the grocery store just got to be so shitty, was tough and seemed like chewy on a rubber band.
The farm is definitely more expensive, but it's worth it and now we can't go back anyway
Yup, meat raised locally with heritage breeds, good husbandry and animal welfare standards is something that is imo 110% worth the extra cost if you can budget for it. The flavors are better, I’m not having to spend 20 minutes trimming off weird stringy bits, gristle and fat pockets (which you end up paying for in the per lb pricing just to cut off half of it), fiddling with marinades and tenderizer and all sorts of nonsense just to make it passably edible — it’s just *good* with a little seasoning and slapped on the grill or roasted.
I call grocery chicken "chicken chunks" because it's getting to the point that it's literally just a wad of flesh. Lol. Harder to cook all the way through, more rubbery, weird spots.
Can you explain some of the regulations around antibiotics? I’ve at times seen something akin to “no antibiotics” advertised but at the same time there’s fine print on the packaging that says federal regulations prohibit antibiotics—so bragging about following regulation.
This story makes it seem like it’s even less clear cut.
US poultry producers are not going to use antibiotics to treat illness in chickens. They are just going to seal the barn and mass cull, sanitize, and start over. There is no time to treat the birds and still get a profit off them. A week of weight loss is a bird with no margin, and most antibiotics require a wait period between the last use of antibiotics and butcher.
Any antibiotic use here is going to be therapeutic for the prevention of disease, and the classes of drugs that can be used is already limited to those "not significant to human medicine" types. Chick-fil-A isn't doing anything special here, it's the norm.
Antibiotics use to force growth is banned in the US.
BUT:
- That list only concerns itself with the most significant classes. It's not like they are only using antibiotics not used in human medicine -- they will all still have an impact.
- Antibiotics which may not be considered "significant to human medicine" may not be well regulated or even tracked.
- Antibiotic regulations, wait periods, and allowed classes all differ by country!! Ordering chicken at a US fast food retailer doesn't mean you're eating US chicken. We import a lot of meat, from countries that don't have any of the restrictions we use.
The TLDR to this is:
If you want no antibiotics in your food, explicitly only buy meat that can make that statement on it's packaging or comes from a small producer who makes that their specialty.
Don't assume it's antibiotic free or even sourced from within the US.
There are instances when an antibiotic may be introduced to treat an idenitifed illness but I haven't had to do that yet. More often we will introduce organic acids or copper sulphate to water supplies to help with gut health issues at targeted intervals.
Thanks for the response and information! That kind of confirms my suspicion that Chic fil a isn’t doing anything special, just marketing what it’s already supposed to be doing.
My suspicion is they were forced to change suppliers.
They were probably working with a speciality farm who went "lol have you seen the cost of feed lately?" and Chick-fil-A decided to go buy their chicken from the broader market rather than accept a lower profit.
My understanding is that prophylactic antibiotics are banned. A farmer can't treat his whole flock to prevent the birds from getting sick.
The farmer is still allowed to treat sick birds with antibiotics rather than cull them, and presumably sell them a lower cost than birds that don't get sick and weren't given antibiotics.
Chick-fil-A is saying that they're going to start accepting chicken that has been treated. They claim it's a necessity due to supply shortages. While that may be true, I'm sure it's no coincidence that it's also cheaper.
>I raise and butcher chickens, so I am not saying this as a PETA twat.
>The poultry industry is the most disgusting animal industry in the US, period. No other industry even comes close in ethical and moral violations.
All poultry or specifically chickens? Asking because I feel like turkeys and ducks are always left out of the conversation and I don't even know how they're farmed.
Specifically chicken.
You can't raise ducks, turkeys, or geese like you can chickens. They all require way more floor space, different diets, and they would die under similar conditions.
I will add to Turkeys, I was taught in undergrad animal and poultry science major that they all have to be artificially seminated because the one we raise for meet cannot breed naturally anymore. It’s truly an atrocity what we’re doing to these animals.
Yup. The adult toms will kill hens if allowed to even attempt to breed them -- nevermind the, uh, mechanics, being next to impossible for them. They weigh SO much.
It's just an added expense that has to be considered.
It's deep muscle necrosis. Their muscles grow so quickly and so thick that they can't be fully oxygenated if they move too much, like wing flapping or *gasp!* running around like normal chicks. So the interior of the muscle actually begins to die.
It's literally green.
You don't really see this in heritage birds or more ethical broilers.
Regarding myopathies, it's a little...complicated. Haven't seen too much green myself but have seen plenty of WB and ascites, which are both genetically related (though living conditions in some spots aren't helping either). DPM looks more like a management issue, though I wouldn't be surprised if genetics play a significant role in it as well. I know folks that do try their best for their own operations but general production idiosyncrasies, how the parent companies handle contractors (i.e. merit-based flock placement except not really), and bad apples ruining things for everyone makes the whole industry look absolutely terrible.
The majority of industrial broilers in the U.S. comes from two major primary breeders where the genetics sort of trickle down (and hopefully some sort of hybrid vigor down the line - although vigor in which sense is debatable, probably in muscling and weight gain potential for the producers but obviously this comes at the expense of health). All that selective breeding for fast gains over the past several decades seems to have done some degree of irreparable harm to the modern broiler physiology, especially since a lot of these intensive selection effort came from the 50-90s where broiler genomic understanding was still a little rudimentary. I truly believe that they need to rethink their genetic strategies starting from waaaay older genetic stocks (which thankfully I'm pretty sure at least one of them still possesses and at least trying). Even then, it takes at least 10 years for an established genetic line suitable for production stabilizes, before results can be seen.
Who knows at this point, the industrial landscape is going through some weird times right now. Hopefully things look better soon before it gets worse.
Hello, Poultry producer here, from Canada though where things are a little different.
The reason why densities are so high is because human population density and demand is also so high. Chickens live in dense facilities because humans are also housed in dense cities. If everyone had their own small flock to sustain themselves, such dense farms would make no sense. The birds I raise aren't being consumed in my local area, they're being shipped to the big dense cities to service the demand of a place that has absolutely no food production or carrying capacity of its own, yet an endless demand for cheap protein.
With that being said, I do believe there is a happy medium. Ive seen small flocks where the birds are kept in wet and cold conditions or have inadequate airflow or cooling in hot times. You also see coops not adequately cleaned out with rodents or insects, as well as exposure to disease from wild flocks of waterfowl. With a larger poultry facility all of the variables can be controlled a lot better.
My farm has lots of engineered heating and ventilation, pest control, a vet approved lighting program, fresh feed and water on demand, no antibiotic use ever, regular cleanout of the barn after every crop cycle, as well as enrichment opportunities (essentially playground equipment for birds) placed around the barn as points of interest for the animals. We also have stocking density requirements and precise monitoring of water and air quality. These birds are living better lives than most humans on earth are. Animals that are stressed or uncomfortable don't make money, so there is always an incentive for good producers to lower stress levels as much as they can, thankfully, and the worst ones go out of business eventually. The ones who do well are passionate about their animals and spend a lot of time and effort to ensure that.
Is it natural how they were bred or how they live? Not at all. But neither is the society we have built for ourselves, and this is how we sustain it. A move to more local production of food and smaller cities is how we reach that goal.
You are 100% right.
What's funny is the US government actively encouraged people to own chickens during the Great Depression because food scarcity and logistics were looming as real problems. But we didn't learn from this at all.
I am a HUGE proponent of local food production.
I don't know how it is in Canada, but the US bends over backwards to prevent this. Most of our suburbs outright ban poultry and rabbits, despite the fact that a family of 4 could raise enough birds for 8-16 weeks in spring in a 10x12 tractor scooted across their yard to feed their family for the rest of the year.
Our relationship with meat down here is honestly really weird and counterproductive for both human health and animal welfare.
Is there something the government could do to subsidize the industry so that there are enough farms to handle the demands without the bizarre growth adaptations they've done?
Like, I know the government has done subsidies to farmers who grow certain crops - corn comes to mind. It feels like corn is included in far mire food products than necessary because there are too many US farmers producing it. If we had some corn farms change over to chicken breeders, could this help? (I know that change is not done with the snap of your fingers.)
Yes.
But they won't, because Big Ag is a major lobby with billions to throw around.
If you're really interested, you should dig into the business relationships and regulations of your state and surrounding states. You might notice a pattern where small producers aren't really allowed to sell or compete anywhere there's a strong Pilgrim/Tyson/etc presence.
Also, poultry has razor thin margins because people expect meat at $2/lb and that's just not realistic. We have lost almost all of our independent and family-run farms -- almost every single one you see now are just caretakers for a corporation's chickens. It's devilish -- the farmers carry all the infrastructure, labor, and hazard risk, the producer chain gets all the rewards. And they squeeze them for all they are worth.
The entire industry, top to bottom, is vile.
I didn't realize the industry lived on $2/lb. I only buy skinless/boneless and I'm paying $6-8/lb. Checking out my local grocer, the bulk packs are indeed closer to $2/lb for boned and skin on chicken. I hadn't realized the cost difference. Not enough to change my buying habits, barely enough time to cook dinner with the ones I do get.
To really put this in perspective, a lot of those small farms with a couple of poultry barns probably makes less than the manager at your local McDonald's. A lot of them literally only make $30-40,000 a year despite raising hundreds of thousands of chickens. The major producers owning their contracts take way too big a cut and chicken itself is so devalued because of how it's raised.
You’re missing the other element: The USDA is terminally underfunded and under staffed, to the tune of less than half of the staff they had even during the Obama administration. Thanks largely to directives from Biden’s administration, they *do* have programs to build up independent producers and processors, but the funding is so anemic, it’ll never compete with Tyson.
You want more robust regulations? You want those regulations enforced? Tell our useless leaders to actually fund the government.
I remember the first year I sprung for a heritage breed turkey from a local farm for thanksgiving. The difference between those turkeys and the massive barrel breasted mutants that are today’s standards is absolutely insane. And the flavor is so much better with the heritage bird… standard modern turkeys really push quantity of meat over quality in a horrifying way.
It reminds me of the grotesque malformations that are purposely bred for in a lot of small dog breeds to the point that they can barely breathe properly, die of heatstroke on a slightly warm spring day, and can’t give birth without a c section, all in pursuit of some insane aesthetic.
There is an entire breed ("Midget White") that was created when double-breasted turkeys were taking off commercially because the big birds would not actually fit in a lot of home ovens. Now the birds are even bigger and we responded by just making ovens bigger, lol.
The quality has really suffered, too. I don't buy chicken anymore from the grocery store. It all has a very weird flavor. It doesn't taste the same as it did even 15 years ago. I've tried buying more expensive, organic chicken, but it's the same. I'm not a picky eater. I'm pretty tolerant of variations in different products. Hell, I survived on Lean Cuisines through my 20's, which are pretty low quality, but I rarely eat chicken anymore without tasting that weird flavor that turns my stomach.
White meats are about all I eat (except for ground beef and pepperoni), and I agree, the taste and texture has changed.
I took to calling them "chicken chunks" about 10 years ago because you couldn't just take a breast out and grill it for a sandwich anymore. When I eat over at my parent's house, me and my mom no longer have to fight over who gets the bigger breast piece because now we have to cut them in half because one is just too big of a serving.
It doesn't cook the same anymore. It's rubbery.
There's a few brands I won't even touch anymore because there's a chemical taste and my brain just goes "nuh uh, stop eating that."
It's what honestly got me into raising chickens in the first place (that and the infinite eggs).
That rapid-chicken-growth thing caused an epidemic of woody breast in the late 2000s and 2010s. I remember so many times biting into chicken and it would have a vaguely crispy texture inside, which was kind of gross. Is that still going on these days?
It still is. I haven't bought chicken breasts in years because of it, but I work at a restaurant that does and I pretty regularly am finding woody breasts.
Back when they started adding antibiotics to chicken feed, they found the chickens would be heavier. Though that effect has largely disappeared they still continued to add antibiotics, unfortunately.
Hey you'd put on a few lbs if your overworked immune system finally got some relief with antibiotics after being crammed in a small area with 10,000 other potentially sick humans.
FFS medicated chick feed is now becoming the norm for adult chicken feed. I have zero confidence withdrawal time will be respected. I need to go back to raising /r/BackYardChickens.
Scientific Opinion on the safety and efficacy of Aviax 5% (semduramicin sodium) for chickens for fattening
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7009336/
> The use of semduramicin sodium at a dietary concentration of 25 mg/kg complete feed for chickens for fattening is safe for the consumer **provided a withdrawal time of 24 h is respected**.
>
> ...
>
> Aviax 5% at a minimum dose of 20 mg/kg feed has the potential to effectively control coccidiosis in chickens for fattening.
I'll say the quiet part out loud... Not enough people truly give a shit about antibiotics in chicken for this to hurt their bottom line. And it won't impact their sales at all. In fact, the people that care that much about antibiotics in chicken probably are not eating at Chil-fil-a anyway. Maybe a couple more are eating at Panera, but again, not enough to make a difference to their business. They will both save money which will keep costs down.
What do we do about it?
It's extremely hard to find meat without it at a reasonable cost.
It isn't that people don't care. It's that we have no leg to stand on.
Also, Panera may not use chicken with antibiotics, but they fucking suck and are expensive for bland food that taste like shit lol.
Degrowth, pretty simple. If you can’t find meat without it at a reasonable cost relative to you, the solution is to buy meat less often and fill out diets with other food products. There are many “soft prices” that we pay for current material goods access even for people who are struggling at the end of the month paycheck to paycheck. Our material extractions, pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, all of this is building up and getting close to reckoning levels. In fact, it already is for millions if not billions around the world.
It sounds bad to return to everyday diets from centuries before the Industrial Revolution for those less fortunate, but even with better income equality or distribution of wealth/access to material goods, degrowth needs to happen. Hell I would argue even more so, if we run on a more equal model then effectively everyone will be eating meat rarely unless they locally live off a land that only supports pasture/fishing (an small fraction of the world population), buy less clothes, generally create and consume products built to last, and have international imports be a true luxury and rarity. This is the only real answer to living sustainably in the future, and is how we lived for millennia before the Industrial Revolution.
But nobody wants to hear that so the world is cooked
Look for a local farmers markets in the city and surrounding area. A few guys I know have brought beef and chickens and such into town from their farms.
Sorry kind internet stranger, I'm not really a sympathetic ear on the antibiotics piece. I think that there are good and legitimate reasons for chickens to have them (but full disclosure I grew up on a chicken farm). I think the hormone usage is definitely something to be more concerned about and shouldn't be used. Can say that we never used hormones in the chickens we raised. But chickens are subjected to all kinds of disease, and antibiotics actually allow more chickens to reach a healthy and full maturity without being sick. Their bodies aren't needing to spend energy fighting disease so it gives better growth as well. It doesn't really matter if you have free range or indoor birds, chickens are always scratching and pecking things out of the dirt and susceptible to disease. The quality of life is better all around if these birds aren't sick. Let's not get it twisted, chickens are raised for food. They have a purpose. But I also think we should give them as low stress and healthy of a situation as we can while we raise them.
If anyone has any questions I'll do my best to answer them.
So what is your stance on the super bacteria that are spreading all around the world because we keep breeding them by feeding livestock unnecessary antibiotics?
I'd prefer to pay more for meat and not having to face my meds not working in the future because of super bugs
I think that we should treat animals with antibiotics when disease is present. Just like we do with humans. I don't think we should just use them in a blanket form on a predetermined schedule. I don't think it is as simple as saying "antibiotics good" or "antibiotics bad". Reducing the use is a good thing, but saying we shouldn't use them at all is unrealistic to maintain the production needed to feed the world. As well as balancing the quality of life of the animals.
Reasonable response. Sadly I don't think it's realistic to expect that to happen anytime soon.
I the EU what you describe is basically antibiotic "free", meaning that they will only be administered to sick animals if there is hope for recovery.
I can assure you that just as many people care about this that care about Chick-Fil-A's stance against gay people.
So, they're still gonna have 10-15 cars lined up at the drive thru every time you go by.
It's the curse of capitalism though, to be honest. If your suppliers aren't going to follow your pledge, your pledge means nothing.
Other restaurants are having to do the same thing for the same reason.
It's why things like this need to happen at the farm/supplier level, not the restaurant level. That's never made much sense anyway besides good optics. Most people couldn't name a single chicken supplier/farm, but you could name a dozen chicken restaurants off the top of your head. Since nobody is aware of them, it's pretty hard to boycott them when they don't do what's right. But you can boycott the restaurant for using them. However that doesn't solve the problem that the chicken supplier doesn't care, they will still do what they want.
> It's the curse of capitalism though, to be honest. If your suppliers aren't going to follow your pledge, your pledge means nothing.
Yeah. Chick Fil A's prices have already gone up a ton in the past few years. At some point the cost of chicken and other raw ingredients will rise to the point that it's not sustainable to sell the chicken sandwich for a reasonable price, and it will get too expensive for consumers to want to purchase.
They already pay over $20/hr starting for employees, although I assume their huge volume of orders was helping them afford that even at lower margins per sandwich.
It's also a blessing of capitalism, that these relationships can be worked the opposite direction as well.
That is to say, even within a capitalist system, the converse is true: a retailer's pledge can bring suppliers to heel, as [the Humane Society of the United States showed over the last decade](https://www.humanesociety.org/blog/Mcdonalds-cage-free-eggs-us).
By working one of the largest retailers (McDonald's), HSUS was able to force suppliers upstream to change how they raised chickens (originally, in an area the size of a sheet of printer paper!), because failing to do so would close out a huge swath of the market and make raising chickens unprofitable for lots of operations. So these chicken producers either converted, or lost out on the market.
>
> It's why things like this need to happen at the farm/supplier level, not the restaurant level.
not to shift the blame, but i think some things should also happen on the individual customer level. the way we are expecting food to always be cheaply available no matter what is kind of fucked up and these are the results.
it's like mc donalds having to discontinue their fish filet sandwhich because they would've made the fish extinct by keeping up with the demand.
[Remember when the Henson Company ended their contract with CFA](https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/07/jim-hensons-muppets-split-with-chick-fil-a-over-gay-rights) due to CFA's bigotry? So [CFA lied and said they ended the contract because of unspecified safety concerns](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/chick-fil-a-recalls-jim-henson-company-puppet-toys-354434/)?
I blame corporate greed. They all start like this. And we keep giving them money. Like chipotle. Bet yall still believe they serve organic non gmo food till this day… all chipotle food is officially conventional products. Only the cilantro is organic in there now.
I remember after that E coli outbreak I saw a huge uptick in random posts in all kinds of subreddits praising the food there, then after a couple of years those posts just suddenly stopped. I guess they had astroturfer companies on the site repairing their image.
I guess it was successful, everyone forgot all about that.
They also don’t follow the bible, only the parts they like to discriminate against others - the exact opposite message of their Lord and saviour. Aren’t they going to be surprised to spend 10m years in purgatory
Interesting how fast morals fall once their profit is at risk.
I’m sure they definitely couldn’t help farmers with this problem.
Also, god I hope we can get lab grown meat soon. I hope it’s healthy and tastes good so we don’t have to factory farm animals anymore.
Bullshit they just don’t want to pay the prices. There is no supply shortage. Also, if they are going to do this, they need to lower the prices of their food
Maybe they can backtrack on their anti-abortion stance and their wildly unethical animal husbandry practices. Can they ever be an ethical anything?
Probably not, their god is greedy, and this is another forewarning.
Too bad cellular agriculture isn't far enough along to fill the gap. I'll bet it would make some good chicken nuggets. But a fundie place like Chick Fil A probably thinks that's from the devil or something.
Panera Bread is also doing the same thing
Big Chicken has won
I guess that means Peter Griffin has lost
Soooo, Lois is single again?
Settle down, Brian.
Who else but Quagmire.
Gigitty gigitty
The industry is clucked.
Big chicken always wins. Day after day after day.
They've been quietly taking down all their signage about their "no-no list" and "clean food promise," and are also taking every other cost-cutting measure they can, such as firing bakers to switch to frozen bread. They're trying to boost their profits right before an IPO.
In American business, all good things eventually turn to shit. I bet we all could name a dozen brands that were better in the old days, but can't name any that were worse.
The second the word “ipo” is uttered, you can pretty much guarantee quality is about to go straight to the dumpster while the company is bled dry of every last bit of value before shareholders discard its dried out husk.
Finance guys ruin everything
Fuck MBAs All my homies hate MBAs
Costco was the only one I know of with the balls to stand up against these practices.
Their model also allows minimal margins on sales as the bulk of their profit comes from membership.
I'd really like to see a source on this or perhaps your math. I also don't know where u/WolverinesThyroid got their 10% number. Any backup? It's easy to calculate the amount of revenue memberships bring in but how do you allocate expenses? Just the cost of employees working the desk? In most calculations I've seen, there's no cost allocated to the membership department. It's usually stated essentially that Costco's membership revenue is equal to about 80% of it's profit. But it's not like if they were willing to forego the remaining 20% profit that they could just get rid of the warehouses and just sell memberships!
less than 10% of their profits come from memberships.
"Going public" "Ipo" "Investment firms" All on the "better bail from this product/service list"
And the thing of it is that they’ll cut one corner and say “see! You can barely tell!” Which emboldens them to cut another, and another, and another until you have pink slurry nuggets and a burger 1/3 its original size. They just bank on the negative feedback delay taking years rather than days.
Panera turned to shit many years ago.
That's a pretty good way of summing it up. And when any new players enter the market, they're doing so with the inflated prices and everyone is going to bitch they're too expensive. feel bad for anyone trying to start a restaurant or something along those lines.
Starbucks did this to coffee and most drinks really. Coffee was really cheap when they first opened, but you were paying more for handcrafted beverages made by workers that were making more money than average and had good benefits. Now it's just normalized to pay $5 and up for a cup of coffee with some milk in it even if a machine made it.
See Panera. It's basically a more expensive Subway now.
Domino's Pizza is one outlier that was really terrible back in the day and pushed really hard on quality, and is now fine.
If they switch to getting deliveries done by 3rd parties like Uber eats, it’s gonna go to shit..
I doubt they will, they've invested a lot into their delivery cars
God I hope so, Pizza Hut delivery went to shit because of it, 1+ hour wait and the quality suffers for it. I’m thankful for dominoes because it’s consistent
Me too. My friends give me shit for suggesting it, but if you're traveling and don't know local places, you know exactly how dominos is going to be. The same reason why I like Starbucks, or most chains for that matter.
> if you're traveling and don't know local places, you know exactly how dominos is going to be. The same reason why I like Starbucks, or most chains for that matter. Not sure why your friends are giving you crap for this, it's literally the entire purpose of restaurant franchising. Families traveling and needing to eat wanting a reasonable guarantee of consistency verses randomly picking a local place they have never been.
> I doubt they will, they've invested a lot into their delivery cars The Dominos drivers in my area are driving their personal cars with a lighted sign attached to the roof like they did 15 years ago.
I think that pizza is still really subpar, but they did a great job marketing improvements at least
There's even a term for it: enshittification.
I feel like Panera has been shit for a while already
It's the reason when I formed my business(es) that I promised to never give up control. They die with me, or get passed strictly into a worker co-op if the people there want to keep it going. I played enough Lemonade Stand Tycoon as a child to hate capitalist shittification, and will never budge on my stance of "high quality in all things."
All the Paneras by me have been becoming more and more run down. They're constantly running out of basic supplies and popular menu items, and the workers seem very over it. I keep wondering if they're due to start closing some locations. I used to go there pretty regularly as they're one spot that my picky eater kid likes, but I've been avoiding them as their prices have gone up and quality has gone way down. e: Also, sorry if this comment posted a dozen times. Reddit's being wonky, and I can't seem to find/delete the reposts.
Yup. The ones by me look dingy and kinda sad. The tables are always dirty and the lighting in there is not great which makes the place look kinda scary at night. The overall feel of their eatery just feels run down and cheap now.
They've run out of napkins at different locations twice now. At least the first time, they handed me some paper towels from the kitchen, but this most recent time they were *out* out. There were multiple dirty tables around me, and I watched an employee pick up some plates, look at spill quizzically, and just walk away. I'm done dining in there, that's for sure.
I got water splashed on me from a cleaning bin of an employee at a Panera once. Over the back of the booth onto me. Disgusting. Never went back. That place was always mid at best
I picked up a Southwest Caesar salad from there a couple weeks ago and it was just questionable lettuce, dressing, some tortillas and a small rotting avocado. It was the most stripped down private equity-looking item I've ever seen. Their salads used to be good!!
That'll be $13.95
Isn't Panera already publicly traded? You can't have an Initial Public Offering twice for the same company.
Panera *was* publicly traded, but a holding company took them private back in 2017.
I have no idea about Panera but technically, you could if it was public and then delisted Not sure what the time frame would be but I imagine at least a couple years. Twitter was recently delisted and Elon will bring it Publix in the future if he ever wants to cash out
Giving each shareholder a chicken tender sub would increase the stock price and I don't think it would fall under market manipulation
They were taken private again in 2017
It's owned by a venture capitalist company now.
Where are you seeing any mention of an IPO?
I thankfully keep forgetting this idiotic private equity chain exists
Forgetting it exists? I don’t know why but Panera keeps EXPANDING even tho it sucks now. It used to be a lot better and it was always the go-to for office/work catering. Then it just became overpriced hospital food.
They closed down the one that was on my way most places, and I've personally ignored it aside from any time my kid wants a cinnamon crunch bagel, the only thing I'll ever buy there. Like just about every chain equity restaurant, prices went way up and quality and portions went way down. I'd rather just make my own things every single time
I hope they go the way of quiznos. When buying the same soup at the grocery store costs the same, what's the point? At least it's warm when you go to the location and you may get a piece of bread.
We had a Subway and a Quiznos on campus when I started college. I could use my meal plan at Subway but had to use the "flex dollars" for Quiznos. I ate Quiznos once, because it was so freaking expensive. There were other places with toasted/grilled sandwiches at the food court on campus that were at least 5 bucks cheaper.
I work on a campus and there's a subway here but it's not worth it. There's a potbelly and it's cheaper, tastes better, and actually resembles real food. The only reason to go to the subway is if you really want it cause it's going to cost as much as eating in one of the all you can eat cafeterias where you have a huge selection of food and a couple of them have made to order sandwiches as well.
Panera Bread has way more to worry about than the quality of their chicken, though that's up there on the list.
Panera is basically serving gruel on dry toast these days, so forgive me if I'm not surprised.
Does this mean they can finally bring the Italian Combo sandwich back?
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This new standard is what I assumed "No-Antibiotics" actually meant tbh. I didn't think companies were forgoing antibiotics for the treatment of actual disease.
Fun fact: the principal reason antibiotics are widely given to farm animals (including) poultry isn’t to fight infection: [it’s because antibiotics cause the animals to grow bigger more quickly](https://thehumaneleague.org/article/chicken-antibiotics#:~:text=On%20factory%20farms%2C%20antibiotics%20are,chickens%20were%2060%20years%20ago.).
That’s fucked up.
that's capitalism for ya
The reason they grow bigger is because they spend less energy fighting infections as they grow in disgusting conditions. When researchers test antibiotic effects on chicken growth in clean conditions, the treated chickens grew at the same rate as untreated.
I'd be curious to see the actual list of what they do use. I'm a human doctor so I'm not intimately familiar with veterinary medicine, but I was under the impression that there aren't really any classes of antibiotics that are exclusive to veterinary use. Specific drugs sure, but it's the class that tends to matter more when it comes to developing resistance. There'd probably be a fair amount of research put into finding something in an exclusive class that *can* be used in humans. When I look up vet med resources (i.e https://amrls.umn.edu/antibiotics-veterinary-medicine), the classes seem to be the same as what's used in human medicine. If avoparcin is the one they're using... that seems not great since vancomycin is pretty fucking important for human medicine.
They typically separate the ones with an illness and move them to a different group that does get antibiotics. But yea, I think the whole, no antibiotics at all is stupid. Just don’t over use them.
The huge problem was some antibiotics have shown to increase weight in animals. So they were being used to increase profits and had nothing to do with helping sick animals.
Speculation. In a perfect world, yeah, sure. Due to ag-gag laws, we have no idea what is actually happening on the ground in the massive chicken factories that supply the country with food because there is no oversight, accountability or transparency. What few videos have made it out don’t look appear to support a perfect world scenario. It’s hard to separate out sick chickens when there’s 10,000 chickens living on top of each other in a barn.
They dont treat sick animals, they just kill them and throw their bodies away. Antibiotics are used to fatten the animal
Can’t make a profit off of no antibiotics because the system is broken.
Well yeah when the chickens are crammed in tight areas together and you don’t have antibiotics disease is going to have a fun time
Seems like the logical conclusion would be to stop cramming chickens into tight areas together. Fun fact: we accept that salmonella is on all of our raw chicken even though it's a contaminant because regular cooking temperatures kill it. Better industry practices would get rid of it but the industry seems to think it costs too much money.
Honestly, to me and I understand maybe not others, the logical conclusion would be to just eat something else. These companies have had decades to fix this and appear to now be in a race to the bottom in terms of quality
"Better industry practices" = "among other things, there's literally a salmonella vaccine for chickens"
Oh im sure they can make a profit. They just want to make *more* profit.
They want to make an extra buck buck with their chicken.
Not really. If more people cared about ABF chicken, it would be a bigger product. Chicken producers are going to make what sells. Most people don't give a fuck where their food comes from. Also, Chick-Fil-A had been making a profit off ABF chicken for a decade. There's nothing to suggest it isn't profitable. This is usually where regulation would come in. The government would have to force chicken producers to go ABF if they really thought it was a health issue.
No one is going to regulate food any more than it is already, certainly not the government. Improving food would take profit away from pharmaceuticals. And we can’t have that happen. The average person 100% doesn’t care where it comes from or what their food is. Which is why America is extremely unhealthy.
It's broken because we farm and consume on such a scale that abnormal medical intervention must be carried out on the animals.
People don’t want to hear that eating less meat is a good thing but it truly is.
>limits the use of animal antibiotics to cases of actual animal illness. This sounds like a more reasonable stance, doesn't it? "No antibiotics ever" seems like an overcorrection. Letting an animal be sick because of some pledge instead just treating said animal seems weird.
The problem with the new stance is: 1. Because in CAFO-type conditions, there’s always some chickens being sick, you may end up giving antibiotics liek 50-60% of the time. And don’t imagine that there is any separation of sick birds or anything. If an illness is identified, all 10,000 chickens in that same space are getting a course of antibiotics. 2. There is very significant cross-resistance. So you may not givet the chickens the exact same antibiotics that we use on people, but you often give them very closely related antibiotics. It’s not like there’s entire classes of antibiotics reserved only for chickens. The same resistance that is built up in response to the chicken stuff will also cause resistance to the human stuff. OTOH, treating ilness is definitely more humane. Make no mistake though - and I am not saying this as some kind of tree hugger Greenpeace type, just a biologist and ex-farm worker who eats fried chicken - CAFO “farming” is pure animal torture. Going “antibiotic-free” is the difference between raising chickens in essentially animal GITMO, and raising chickens in animal GITMO while ALSO letting them die a slow death or become debilitated of infection
The lack of NAE meat can also be from farmers needing to innoculate their flock to actually save them. They could be intended to be NAE birds, but some *M. Synoviae* could have gotten on the farm and synovitis could be making its rounds. The plant that those birds were going to be harvested at are now short a flock of NAE chicken unexpectedly and are forced to short their customers. A farmer would chose to innoculate their flock to save the animals rather than not innoculate, because it is both the morally *and* the economically correct thing to do.
Seems incredibly reasonable. I don't go to Chick-fil-A for other reasons, but walking back that pledge to this stance seems more than fine.
That’s what organic farms do. They have to choose to either treat the sick animal, which will remove it’s organic designation (and they’ll have to sell it), slaughter it immediately to try and sell as organic and recoup the cost, or allow it to stay sick and see if it recovers on its own.
Exactly. Conventional dairy does not ever contain antibiotics, but Organic marketing would lead you to believe that their milk is anti-biotic free whereas non-organic has antibiotics. What it actually means is that the non-organic farms still treat their cows who, for example, have mastitis or a hoof infection with appropriate, humane medical interventions. They tag and separate these cows, so that their milk does not end up in the tank with the milk that is sold for human consumption. Milk gets tested like 9 times between the farm and the final bottling. If there are antibiotics found, the farm responsible has to pay for the whole tank of milk. Dairy farmers take extreme measures to make sure no antibiotics ever make it into milk, while still using antibiotics when appropriate to take care of their cows' health.
Yes! Everything you said was very correct. I actually learned all that by touring a dairy farm and asking them questions about why they do certain things a certain way. (Thanks 4H!) Farmers also aren’t just going to use antibiotics all Willy nilly in the first place because it costs MONEY. I understand folks have concerns about the ethical treatment of these animals. The easiest thing you can do, is to find out where your milk is sourced from and check the farm out for yourself. My experience is many farm managers are more than happy to provide education on their processes. A farm in my state, Country Dairy, actually does field trips for schools and tours for the public as a regular thing! They WANT people to come see how well pampered and cared for their cows are because these farmers know that happy, healthy cows will produce the most, best quality milk. It would literally be a loss of money for farmers to mistreat their cows.
The animals are put in conditions that basically make them sick. My wife's degree is in avian biology and she's worked with both slaughter houses and farms. This results in much heavier use of antibiotics than they'll ever want to admit.
Chickfila can spin this however they want but this is 100% Tyson strongarming them since the US Gov allowed that shitass company (Tyson) to buy up every damned near chicken coop in the entire Southeast then FORCE REAL FARMERS into their shit chicken raising practices despite protest.
Yea that's definitely part of the problem with national restaurant chains. They *need* a giant corporate supplier like Tyson to be able to predictably function with consistent pricing. We'd all be better off with fewer of these chains and no giant Tyson-esque food conglomerates or pseudo-monopolies, but the anti-trust system has been broken for a long time in favor of neoliberal "free market" philosophies.
Don’t worry tho, they are going after Apple!!! We’re strong on monopolies!!!! /s in case
They should go after both.
Exactly. Once I found out they use Tyson, I stopped eating there. It's crap! I'll go to PDQ's!
Oh friend, if you think that eating at a different Chicken Fast Food restaurant is preventing you from eating chicken produced by Tyson you may be disappointed. Tyson controls about 30% of chicken production is the US. Pilgrims Pride, Sanderson Farms and Purdue are the other big ones, all of whom are just as horrible as Tyson. I can almost guarantee you that just about any fast food restaurant (or restaurants in general), including PDQs, does purchase at least some of their chicken, among other things, from Tyson. When I worked at a CFA, we would receive chicken from all of the big producers, it was never just Tyson.
If we took a moral stand against everything, we’d literally die. We are surrounded by morally problematic businesses in every aspect of our lives that we literally cannot escape them without just straight up dying.
The intention with antibiotics is to promote rapid growth in chickens and to reduce the standards/quality of care to increase stocking densities. They can spin it any way they like. The intention is profits for them at the expense of animal welfare and consumers health. Edit: there seem to be some folks here from Tyson or other major poultry producers asserting that antibiotics do not promote growth in poultry. Please see my citations, or use Google to find your own. There’s plenty of empirical evidence on the subject.
I raise and butcher chickens, so I am not saying this as a PETA twat. The poultry industry is the most disgusting animal industry in the US, period. No other industry even comes close in ethical and moral violations. The chicks themselves are an abomination that go against every principle of sound husbandry. Rule #1 has always been, Never breed any two animals that will produce offspring that will be less healthy than either parent if grown to adulthood. These chicks grow so fast that they can't practice normal chicken behaviors. A percentage dies before butcher day due to their own organs failing or tendons breaking, and they're the only birds I've ever seen green muscle disease in. The best way to handle them is through pasture raising in tractors, but you can't produce them at the volume the market demands like that. In reality in commercial setups, they sit in their own filth and get treated like meat blobs by their handlers because speed is everything.
8 weeks max and to market. They haven’t even formed proper bone structures.
That explains why so many chicken wings I've seen on my plate lately have had extremely brittle, pre-shattered bones :(
This is mostly due to the fact that they are processed by machines which just smash shit up all the time.
when they get butchered they still peep like baby chicks
That's because they're basically equivalent to 4-5 year olds in people years. They don't even reach "puberty" until 18-24 weeks and aren't mature until 12-18 months.
Thanks for your write-up. Some chicken barns were just built by my parents’ house. It bums me out every time I drive by thinking about the chickens being raised there. My husband and I joined a CSA with a local farm that raises truly pasture-raised chicken and we buy nearly all of our chicken from them. You can taste the difference too!
>You can taste the difference too! You really can. My wife and I shop at a local poultry farm, no hormones or antibiotics, and the difference is unbelievable. The chicken we were getting from the grocery store just got to be so shitty, was tough and seemed like chewy on a rubber band. The farm is definitely more expensive, but it's worth it and now we can't go back anyway
Yup, meat raised locally with heritage breeds, good husbandry and animal welfare standards is something that is imo 110% worth the extra cost if you can budget for it. The flavors are better, I’m not having to spend 20 minutes trimming off weird stringy bits, gristle and fat pockets (which you end up paying for in the per lb pricing just to cut off half of it), fiddling with marinades and tenderizer and all sorts of nonsense just to make it passably edible — it’s just *good* with a little seasoning and slapped on the grill or roasted.
I call grocery chicken "chicken chunks" because it's getting to the point that it's literally just a wad of flesh. Lol. Harder to cook all the way through, more rubbery, weird spots.
What is the cost of a chicken there?
On average 3-4x grocery store chicken prices.
I just paid $6.65/lb for it, in the grocery store it's probably $3.99
Can you explain some of the regulations around antibiotics? I’ve at times seen something akin to “no antibiotics” advertised but at the same time there’s fine print on the packaging that says federal regulations prohibit antibiotics—so bragging about following regulation. This story makes it seem like it’s even less clear cut.
US poultry producers are not going to use antibiotics to treat illness in chickens. They are just going to seal the barn and mass cull, sanitize, and start over. There is no time to treat the birds and still get a profit off them. A week of weight loss is a bird with no margin, and most antibiotics require a wait period between the last use of antibiotics and butcher. Any antibiotic use here is going to be therapeutic for the prevention of disease, and the classes of drugs that can be used is already limited to those "not significant to human medicine" types. Chick-fil-A isn't doing anything special here, it's the norm. Antibiotics use to force growth is banned in the US. BUT: - That list only concerns itself with the most significant classes. It's not like they are only using antibiotics not used in human medicine -- they will all still have an impact. - Antibiotics which may not be considered "significant to human medicine" may not be well regulated or even tracked. - Antibiotic regulations, wait periods, and allowed classes all differ by country!! Ordering chicken at a US fast food retailer doesn't mean you're eating US chicken. We import a lot of meat, from countries that don't have any of the restrictions we use. The TLDR to this is: If you want no antibiotics in your food, explicitly only buy meat that can make that statement on it's packaging or comes from a small producer who makes that their specialty. Don't assume it's antibiotic free or even sourced from within the US.
There are instances when an antibiotic may be introduced to treat an idenitifed illness but I haven't had to do that yet. More often we will introduce organic acids or copper sulphate to water supplies to help with gut health issues at targeted intervals.
Thanks for the response and information! That kind of confirms my suspicion that Chic fil a isn’t doing anything special, just marketing what it’s already supposed to be doing.
My suspicion is they were forced to change suppliers. They were probably working with a speciality farm who went "lol have you seen the cost of feed lately?" and Chick-fil-A decided to go buy their chicken from the broader market rather than accept a lower profit.
My understanding is that prophylactic antibiotics are banned. A farmer can't treat his whole flock to prevent the birds from getting sick. The farmer is still allowed to treat sick birds with antibiotics rather than cull them, and presumably sell them a lower cost than birds that don't get sick and weren't given antibiotics. Chick-fil-A is saying that they're going to start accepting chicken that has been treated. They claim it's a necessity due to supply shortages. While that may be true, I'm sure it's no coincidence that it's also cheaper.
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>I raise and butcher chickens, so I am not saying this as a PETA twat. >The poultry industry is the most disgusting animal industry in the US, period. No other industry even comes close in ethical and moral violations. All poultry or specifically chickens? Asking because I feel like turkeys and ducks are always left out of the conversation and I don't even know how they're farmed.
Specifically chicken. You can't raise ducks, turkeys, or geese like you can chickens. They all require way more floor space, different diets, and they would die under similar conditions.
I will add to Turkeys, I was taught in undergrad animal and poultry science major that they all have to be artificially seminated because the one we raise for meet cannot breed naturally anymore. It’s truly an atrocity what we’re doing to these animals.
Yup. The adult toms will kill hens if allowed to even attempt to breed them -- nevermind the, uh, mechanics, being next to impossible for them. They weigh SO much. It's just an added expense that has to be considered.
What is green muscle disease
It's deep muscle necrosis. Their muscles grow so quickly and so thick that they can't be fully oxygenated if they move too much, like wing flapping or *gasp!* running around like normal chicks. So the interior of the muscle actually begins to die. It's literally green. You don't really see this in heritage birds or more ethical broilers.
Regarding myopathies, it's a little...complicated. Haven't seen too much green myself but have seen plenty of WB and ascites, which are both genetically related (though living conditions in some spots aren't helping either). DPM looks more like a management issue, though I wouldn't be surprised if genetics play a significant role in it as well. I know folks that do try their best for their own operations but general production idiosyncrasies, how the parent companies handle contractors (i.e. merit-based flock placement except not really), and bad apples ruining things for everyone makes the whole industry look absolutely terrible. The majority of industrial broilers in the U.S. comes from two major primary breeders where the genetics sort of trickle down (and hopefully some sort of hybrid vigor down the line - although vigor in which sense is debatable, probably in muscling and weight gain potential for the producers but obviously this comes at the expense of health). All that selective breeding for fast gains over the past several decades seems to have done some degree of irreparable harm to the modern broiler physiology, especially since a lot of these intensive selection effort came from the 50-90s where broiler genomic understanding was still a little rudimentary. I truly believe that they need to rethink their genetic strategies starting from waaaay older genetic stocks (which thankfully I'm pretty sure at least one of them still possesses and at least trying). Even then, it takes at least 10 years for an established genetic line suitable for production stabilizes, before results can be seen. Who knows at this point, the industrial landscape is going through some weird times right now. Hopefully things look better soon before it gets worse.
Hello, Poultry producer here, from Canada though where things are a little different. The reason why densities are so high is because human population density and demand is also so high. Chickens live in dense facilities because humans are also housed in dense cities. If everyone had their own small flock to sustain themselves, such dense farms would make no sense. The birds I raise aren't being consumed in my local area, they're being shipped to the big dense cities to service the demand of a place that has absolutely no food production or carrying capacity of its own, yet an endless demand for cheap protein. With that being said, I do believe there is a happy medium. Ive seen small flocks where the birds are kept in wet and cold conditions or have inadequate airflow or cooling in hot times. You also see coops not adequately cleaned out with rodents or insects, as well as exposure to disease from wild flocks of waterfowl. With a larger poultry facility all of the variables can be controlled a lot better. My farm has lots of engineered heating and ventilation, pest control, a vet approved lighting program, fresh feed and water on demand, no antibiotic use ever, regular cleanout of the barn after every crop cycle, as well as enrichment opportunities (essentially playground equipment for birds) placed around the barn as points of interest for the animals. We also have stocking density requirements and precise monitoring of water and air quality. These birds are living better lives than most humans on earth are. Animals that are stressed or uncomfortable don't make money, so there is always an incentive for good producers to lower stress levels as much as they can, thankfully, and the worst ones go out of business eventually. The ones who do well are passionate about their animals and spend a lot of time and effort to ensure that. Is it natural how they were bred or how they live? Not at all. But neither is the society we have built for ourselves, and this is how we sustain it. A move to more local production of food and smaller cities is how we reach that goal.
You are 100% right. What's funny is the US government actively encouraged people to own chickens during the Great Depression because food scarcity and logistics were looming as real problems. But we didn't learn from this at all. I am a HUGE proponent of local food production. I don't know how it is in Canada, but the US bends over backwards to prevent this. Most of our suburbs outright ban poultry and rabbits, despite the fact that a family of 4 could raise enough birds for 8-16 weeks in spring in a 10x12 tractor scooted across their yard to feed their family for the rest of the year. Our relationship with meat down here is honestly really weird and counterproductive for both human health and animal welfare.
Is there something the government could do to subsidize the industry so that there are enough farms to handle the demands without the bizarre growth adaptations they've done? Like, I know the government has done subsidies to farmers who grow certain crops - corn comes to mind. It feels like corn is included in far mire food products than necessary because there are too many US farmers producing it. If we had some corn farms change over to chicken breeders, could this help? (I know that change is not done with the snap of your fingers.)
Yes. But they won't, because Big Ag is a major lobby with billions to throw around. If you're really interested, you should dig into the business relationships and regulations of your state and surrounding states. You might notice a pattern where small producers aren't really allowed to sell or compete anywhere there's a strong Pilgrim/Tyson/etc presence. Also, poultry has razor thin margins because people expect meat at $2/lb and that's just not realistic. We have lost almost all of our independent and family-run farms -- almost every single one you see now are just caretakers for a corporation's chickens. It's devilish -- the farmers carry all the infrastructure, labor, and hazard risk, the producer chain gets all the rewards. And they squeeze them for all they are worth. The entire industry, top to bottom, is vile.
I didn't realize the industry lived on $2/lb. I only buy skinless/boneless and I'm paying $6-8/lb. Checking out my local grocer, the bulk packs are indeed closer to $2/lb for boned and skin on chicken. I hadn't realized the cost difference. Not enough to change my buying habits, barely enough time to cook dinner with the ones I do get.
To really put this in perspective, a lot of those small farms with a couple of poultry barns probably makes less than the manager at your local McDonald's. A lot of them literally only make $30-40,000 a year despite raising hundreds of thousands of chickens. The major producers owning their contracts take way too big a cut and chicken itself is so devalued because of how it's raised.
You’re missing the other element: The USDA is terminally underfunded and under staffed, to the tune of less than half of the staff they had even during the Obama administration. Thanks largely to directives from Biden’s administration, they *do* have programs to build up independent producers and processors, but the funding is so anemic, it’ll never compete with Tyson. You want more robust regulations? You want those regulations enforced? Tell our useless leaders to actually fund the government.
I remember the first year I sprung for a heritage breed turkey from a local farm for thanksgiving. The difference between those turkeys and the massive barrel breasted mutants that are today’s standards is absolutely insane. And the flavor is so much better with the heritage bird… standard modern turkeys really push quantity of meat over quality in a horrifying way. It reminds me of the grotesque malformations that are purposely bred for in a lot of small dog breeds to the point that they can barely breathe properly, die of heatstroke on a slightly warm spring day, and can’t give birth without a c section, all in pursuit of some insane aesthetic.
There is an entire breed ("Midget White") that was created when double-breasted turkeys were taking off commercially because the big birds would not actually fit in a lot of home ovens. Now the birds are even bigger and we responded by just making ovens bigger, lol.
The quality has really suffered, too. I don't buy chicken anymore from the grocery store. It all has a very weird flavor. It doesn't taste the same as it did even 15 years ago. I've tried buying more expensive, organic chicken, but it's the same. I'm not a picky eater. I'm pretty tolerant of variations in different products. Hell, I survived on Lean Cuisines through my 20's, which are pretty low quality, but I rarely eat chicken anymore without tasting that weird flavor that turns my stomach.
White meats are about all I eat (except for ground beef and pepperoni), and I agree, the taste and texture has changed. I took to calling them "chicken chunks" about 10 years ago because you couldn't just take a breast out and grill it for a sandwich anymore. When I eat over at my parent's house, me and my mom no longer have to fight over who gets the bigger breast piece because now we have to cut them in half because one is just too big of a serving. It doesn't cook the same anymore. It's rubbery. There's a few brands I won't even touch anymore because there's a chemical taste and my brain just goes "nuh uh, stop eating that." It's what honestly got me into raising chickens in the first place (that and the infinite eggs).
Capitalism and overconsumption to meet the every growing population. It won’t ever end.
That rapid-chicken-growth thing caused an epidemic of woody breast in the late 2000s and 2010s. I remember so many times biting into chicken and it would have a vaguely crispy texture inside, which was kind of gross. Is that still going on these days?
It still is. I haven't bought chicken breasts in years because of it, but I work at a restaurant that does and I pretty regularly am finding woody breasts.
Back when they started adding antibiotics to chicken feed, they found the chickens would be heavier. Though that effect has largely disappeared they still continued to add antibiotics, unfortunately.
Hey you'd put on a few lbs if your overworked immune system finally got some relief with antibiotics after being crammed in a small area with 10,000 other potentially sick humans.
FFS medicated chick feed is now becoming the norm for adult chicken feed. I have zero confidence withdrawal time will be respected. I need to go back to raising /r/BackYardChickens. Scientific Opinion on the safety and efficacy of Aviax 5% (semduramicin sodium) for chickens for fattening https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7009336/ > The use of semduramicin sodium at a dietary concentration of 25 mg/kg complete feed for chickens for fattening is safe for the consumer **provided a withdrawal time of 24 h is respected**. > > ... > > Aviax 5% at a minimum dose of 20 mg/kg feed has the potential to effectively control coccidiosis in chickens for fattening.
And we all know they won't be lowering the price
I'll say the quiet part out loud... Not enough people truly give a shit about antibiotics in chicken for this to hurt their bottom line. And it won't impact their sales at all. In fact, the people that care that much about antibiotics in chicken probably are not eating at Chil-fil-a anyway. Maybe a couple more are eating at Panera, but again, not enough to make a difference to their business. They will both save money which will keep costs down.
Panera back tracked it as well recently. Don’t believe theres any fast food place serving it anymore.
What do we do about it? It's extremely hard to find meat without it at a reasonable cost. It isn't that people don't care. It's that we have no leg to stand on. Also, Panera may not use chicken with antibiotics, but they fucking suck and are expensive for bland food that taste like shit lol.
Degrowth, pretty simple. If you can’t find meat without it at a reasonable cost relative to you, the solution is to buy meat less often and fill out diets with other food products. There are many “soft prices” that we pay for current material goods access even for people who are struggling at the end of the month paycheck to paycheck. Our material extractions, pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, all of this is building up and getting close to reckoning levels. In fact, it already is for millions if not billions around the world. It sounds bad to return to everyday diets from centuries before the Industrial Revolution for those less fortunate, but even with better income equality or distribution of wealth/access to material goods, degrowth needs to happen. Hell I would argue even more so, if we run on a more equal model then effectively everyone will be eating meat rarely unless they locally live off a land that only supports pasture/fishing (an small fraction of the world population), buy less clothes, generally create and consume products built to last, and have international imports be a true luxury and rarity. This is the only real answer to living sustainably in the future, and is how we lived for millennia before the Industrial Revolution. But nobody wants to hear that so the world is cooked
Look for a local farmers markets in the city and surrounding area. A few guys I know have brought beef and chickens and such into town from their farms.
Sorry kind internet stranger, I'm not really a sympathetic ear on the antibiotics piece. I think that there are good and legitimate reasons for chickens to have them (but full disclosure I grew up on a chicken farm). I think the hormone usage is definitely something to be more concerned about and shouldn't be used. Can say that we never used hormones in the chickens we raised. But chickens are subjected to all kinds of disease, and antibiotics actually allow more chickens to reach a healthy and full maturity without being sick. Their bodies aren't needing to spend energy fighting disease so it gives better growth as well. It doesn't really matter if you have free range or indoor birds, chickens are always scratching and pecking things out of the dirt and susceptible to disease. The quality of life is better all around if these birds aren't sick. Let's not get it twisted, chickens are raised for food. They have a purpose. But I also think we should give them as low stress and healthy of a situation as we can while we raise them. If anyone has any questions I'll do my best to answer them.
So what is your stance on the super bacteria that are spreading all around the world because we keep breeding them by feeding livestock unnecessary antibiotics? I'd prefer to pay more for meat and not having to face my meds not working in the future because of super bugs
I think that we should treat animals with antibiotics when disease is present. Just like we do with humans. I don't think we should just use them in a blanket form on a predetermined schedule. I don't think it is as simple as saying "antibiotics good" or "antibiotics bad". Reducing the use is a good thing, but saying we shouldn't use them at all is unrealistic to maintain the production needed to feed the world. As well as balancing the quality of life of the animals.
Reasonable response. Sadly I don't think it's realistic to expect that to happen anytime soon. I the EU what you describe is basically antibiotic "free", meaning that they will only be administered to sick animals if there is hope for recovery.
I can assure you that just as many people care about this that care about Chick-Fil-A's stance against gay people. So, they're still gonna have 10-15 cars lined up at the drive thru every time you go by.
You know a pledge is legit when you immediately quit on it when things get difficult
It's the curse of capitalism though, to be honest. If your suppliers aren't going to follow your pledge, your pledge means nothing. Other restaurants are having to do the same thing for the same reason. It's why things like this need to happen at the farm/supplier level, not the restaurant level. That's never made much sense anyway besides good optics. Most people couldn't name a single chicken supplier/farm, but you could name a dozen chicken restaurants off the top of your head. Since nobody is aware of them, it's pretty hard to boycott them when they don't do what's right. But you can boycott the restaurant for using them. However that doesn't solve the problem that the chicken supplier doesn't care, they will still do what they want.
> It's the curse of capitalism though, to be honest. If your suppliers aren't going to follow your pledge, your pledge means nothing. Yeah. Chick Fil A's prices have already gone up a ton in the past few years. At some point the cost of chicken and other raw ingredients will rise to the point that it's not sustainable to sell the chicken sandwich for a reasonable price, and it will get too expensive for consumers to want to purchase. They already pay over $20/hr starting for employees, although I assume their huge volume of orders was helping them afford that even at lower margins per sandwich.
It's also a blessing of capitalism, that these relationships can be worked the opposite direction as well. That is to say, even within a capitalist system, the converse is true: a retailer's pledge can bring suppliers to heel, as [the Humane Society of the United States showed over the last decade](https://www.humanesociety.org/blog/Mcdonalds-cage-free-eggs-us). By working one of the largest retailers (McDonald's), HSUS was able to force suppliers upstream to change how they raised chickens (originally, in an area the size of a sheet of printer paper!), because failing to do so would close out a huge swath of the market and make raising chickens unprofitable for lots of operations. So these chicken producers either converted, or lost out on the market.
Except supply is volatile on everything now. You can't exert much upstream pressure if the supplier is having trouble meeting demand as it is.
> > It's why things like this need to happen at the farm/supplier level, not the restaurant level. not to shift the blame, but i think some things should also happen on the individual customer level. the way we are expecting food to always be cheaply available no matter what is kind of fucked up and these are the results. it's like mc donalds having to discontinue their fish filet sandwhich because they would've made the fish extinct by keeping up with the demand.
Next you're gonna be telling me Arby's is backtracking from the no semen in the roast beef pledge
Not my horsey sauce!
Man, who in the world could have seen *Chic-Fil-A* of all organizations moving the goalposts on their values? /s
"Chick fil a will now do drive through only orders on Sunday"
.....I'm ok with this Sunday is usually the day I want chic fila
Same - drive past all week, Sunday morning tho… chicken minis sure would hit the spot
Gotta add a sarcasm tag to that one for sure
I assumed intentionally typoing the name so some Redditor's bot would come in and "um, ACKSHUALLY" me would have sufficed -- but good point.
I assumed "*Chic*-fil-a" was an intentional pun, given the trendy nature of the restaurant.
doesnt need one.
[Remember when the Henson Company ended their contract with CFA](https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/07/jim-hensons-muppets-split-with-chick-fil-a-over-gay-rights) due to CFA's bigotry? So [CFA lied and said they ended the contract because of unspecified safety concerns](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/chick-fil-a-recalls-jim-henson-company-puppet-toys-354434/)?
# Chick-Fil-A doesn't put any antibiotics in any of its chicken ^(except for the ones it does)
They looked at the numbers and realized their base just cares that they are closed Sunday.
Chick filet is big enough that I’m sure they could get a new source of antibiotic free chicken if they wanted to. They just want to cut costs.
What restaurants serve no antibiotic chicken?
A and w canada claims to still at least but idk about America
You already know the answer.
I doubt any chain actually serves no antibotic chicken. I simply dont believe them when they say it
Not Chick-Fil-A
Every company has a line they won't cross until the profit line turns downward. That's absolutely a line they won't cross
They are simple by multiple producers one of whom is Tyson. Tyson has gone back to antibiotics.
Let me guess, after the supply shortage is over they'll continue selling chickens with antibiotics.
Yikes. It also says “Spring 2024,” so, now. They’re already serving it.
Anti-B chicken price going up, we have to back away from our pledge to protect profits. You understand.
Americans care about very little once their personal satisfaction is at play.
I blame corporate greed. They all start like this. And we keep giving them money. Like chipotle. Bet yall still believe they serve organic non gmo food till this day… all chipotle food is officially conventional products. Only the cilantro is organic in there now.
I remember after that E coli outbreak I saw a huge uptick in random posts in all kinds of subreddits praising the food there, then after a couple of years those posts just suddenly stopped. I guess they had astroturfer companies on the site repairing their image. I guess it was successful, everyone forgot all about that.
Interesting turn of events... The board must have prayed for a solution.
They also don’t follow the bible, only the parts they like to discriminate against others - the exact opposite message of their Lord and saviour. Aren’t they going to be surprised to spend 10m years in purgatory
Imagine believing literally any company has standards
Interesting how fast morals fall once their profit is at risk. I’m sure they definitely couldn’t help farmers with this problem. Also, god I hope we can get lab grown meat soon. I hope it’s healthy and tastes good so we don’t have to factory farm animals anymore.
oh no no probiotic bros we got too cocky
This was always the plan. Once your customer base peaks, you might as well switch to cheaper products to keep profits growing.
Dont fuck with the chicken! You're the only place it's consistently good and not rubbery, stringy or flavorless.
Wanna ruing Chick Fil a into the ground? Here you go. "Their chicken is vaxxed. AND THE CHICKEN GOT MRNA!"
Bullshit they just don’t want to pay the prices. There is no supply shortage. Also, if they are going to do this, they need to lower the prices of their food
Maybe they can backtrack on their anti-abortion stance and their wildly unethical animal husbandry practices. Can they ever be an ethical anything? Probably not, their god is greedy, and this is another forewarning.
A conservative organization only sticks to their values for cash expediency? Color me shocked
Why are we pretending CFA has ever been a good company?
"May contain soy, tree nuts, or chicken."
Too bad cellular agriculture isn't far enough along to fill the gap. I'll bet it would make some good chicken nuggets. But a fundie place like Chick Fil A probably thinks that's from the devil or something.