Chick-fil-A Vows to Serve Chicken Raised Without Antibiotics

Chick-fil-A's famous chicken sandwiches will still be breaded and fried, but soon they won't come with antibiotics.

On Tuesday, Chick-fil-A, the privately held food chain based in Atlanta,announced that it intends to serve chicken "raised without antibiotics" at all its restaurants within five years. It sounds like a clear-cut promise. The history of such vows, though, isn't so simple.

In 2007, Tyson Foods created a campaign to sell chicken that was "raised without antibiotics." Then it turned out Tyson was injecting the chicken eggs with a vaccine that included antibiotics.

Other fast-food chains have announced policies to curb antibiotic use in livestock, most notably McDonald's in 2003, but those polices have included loopholes that allowed livestock producers to continue giving antibiotics to healthy animals. Read more...