KFC, the second-biggest U.S. chicken chain by sales after privately held Chick-fil-A, is giving its U.S. poultry suppliers until the end of 2018 to stop using antibiotics important to human medicine.

Some 70 per cent of antibiotics vital for fighting infections in humans are sold for use in meat and dairy production and medical researchers have concerns that overuse of those drugs may diminish their effectiveness in fighting disease in humans.

McDonald’s Corp.’s roughly 14,000 U.S. restaurants last year stopped serving chicken raised with antibiotics considered important to human medicine. Its Chicken McNuggets are a top seller and the change put pressure on the rest of the industry to follow.

Chick-fil-A is going a step further, vowing in 2014 to switch to poultry raised without any antibiotics at all by the end of 2019.

Given its stature, KFC had been the focus of several antibiotic reduction campaigns by consumer, health and environment groups in addition to a coalition of British and U.S. shareholders with more than US$2 trillion in assets under management.

“We recognize that it’s a growing public health concern,” KFC U.S. President Kevin Hochman told Reuters on Thursday.

“This is something that’s important to many of our customers and it’s something we need to do to show relevance and modernity within our brand,” Hochman said.

The policy applies only to KFC in the U.S. and its 4,200 restaurants supplied by some 2,000 domestic chicken farms, said Hochman. KFC’s antibiotic policy is set on a country-by-country basis, he added. Yum spun off its KFC-dominated China division in November.

KFC said in a statement on its website that its plan will make it the “first major chicken chain to extend this commitment to our bone-in chicken.”

‘Great news’

Vijay Sukumar, chief food innovation officer for KFC U.S., said the new policy applies throughout the bird’s full life cycle, which includes the hatchery where chicks are sometimes injected with antibiotics while still in the shell.

Using data from a 2017 WATT PoultryUSA survey, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) estimates that more than 42 per cent of the U.S. chicken industry is either under an antibiotics stewardship pledge or has already converted to responsible practices.

KFC’s new policy will likely move the number even higher, said Lena Brook, a food policy advocate at the NRDC, who noted that the estimate includes “raised without antibiotics” pledges as well as “raised without medically important” antibiotics pledges from producers like Tyson Foods, Perdue Farms and others.

“It’s great news for fried chicken lovers, and most importantly it’s great news for public health,” Brook said. “Their commitment is one that we’ve been waiting for.”

Human infections from antibiotic-resistant bacteria pose a grave threat to global health and are estimated to kill at least 23,000 Americans each year, although a recent Reuters investigation found that many infection-related deaths are going uncounted.

Hochman said the policy change has been in the works for a year. It will add some incremental cost that KFC plans to manage rather than pass on in the form of menu price increases, he said.

At least some of KFC’s suppliers are already well on their way to compliance.

Tyson, the largest U.S. poultry producer and a KFC supplier, has announced plans to eliminate the use of human antibiotics in its chicken flocks by September 2017.

Yum’s Taco Bell chain already committed to serve chicken raised without antibiotics important to human medicine in all U.S. restaurants by the end of last month. Its Pizza Hut division has the same rules for pizza toppings.

— Lisa Baertlein reports on the restaurant and grocery sectors for Reuters from Los Angeles.

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The proposal from shareholder activists As You Sow, of Oakland, Calif., and the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia comes as KFC lags rivals McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, Subway and Wendy’s in setting policies to curb the routine use of antibiotics in chicken production.

Those policies are a first step for many fast-food chains that are under pressure to help combat the rise of dangerous “superbugs,” as antibiotic-resistant bacteria are known.

Yum’s Taco Bell chain has committed to stop using antibiotics important to human medicine in its chicken supply early next year and the company’s Pizza Hut chain has made a similar promise for the chicken used in its pizza toppings. KFC, which buys far more chicken than its two sister brands, has not made a similar promise.

Some 70 per cent of antibiotics vital for fighting infections in humans are sold for use in meat and dairy production.

Veterinary use of antibiotics is legal. However, as the number of human infections from antibiotic-resistant bacteria increases, consumer advocates and public health experts have campaigned to end the routine use of antibiotics important to human medicine for growth promotion or illness prevention in farm animals that are not sick.

Advocates have targeted KFC because it has far more restaurants than any other fast-food chicken chain and is second in sales behind Chick-fil-A, which has committed to finishing its switch to chicken raised without any antibiotics by the end of 2019.

McDonald’s USA last week said it completed its move to chicken raised without antibiotics important to human medicine. Wendy’s plans to make a similar switch by 2017.

KFC has said that by 2017, antibiotics important for human medicine will only be used to maintain chicken health and only under the supervision and prescription of a licensed veterinarian. As per federal government guidance, KFC does not allow the use of such antibiotics for growth promotion.

Critics say the stated policy at KFC effectively allows for routine use of antibiotics by its chicken suppliers.

“Yum Brands’ silence in the face of this looming antibiotic resistance crisis is bad for business,” said Austin Wilson, As You Sow’s environmental health program manager.

As You Sow filed similar shareholder proposals at Wendy’s and Burger King parent Restaurant Brands International, but pulled them after the companies agreed to set stricter antibiotic policies by the end of 2016.

— Lisa Baertlein is a Reuters correspondent covering the restaurant and grocery sectors from Los Angeles.

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“We risk being in a post-antibiotic world,” said Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, referring to the urinary tract infection of a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman who had not travelled within the prior five months.

Frieden, speaking at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington, D.C., said the bacteria was resistant to colistin, an antibiotic that is reserved for use against “nightmare bacteria.”

The infection was reported Thursday in a study appearing in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. It said the superbug itself had first been infected with a tiny piece of DNA called a plasmid, which passed along a gene called mcr-1 that confers resistance to colistin.

“(This) heralds the emergence of truly pan-drug resistant bacteria,” said the study, which was conducted by the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of mcr-1 in the USA.”

The patient visited a clinic on April 26 with symptoms of a urinary tract infection, according to the study, which did not describe her current condition. Authors of the study could not immediately be reached for comment.

The study said continued surveillance to determine the true frequency of the gene in the U.S. is critical.

“It is dangerous and we would assume it can be spread quickly, even in a hospital environment if it is not well contained,” said Dr. Gail Cassell, a microbiologist and senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School.

But she said the potential speed of its spread will not be known until more is learned about how the Pennsylvania patient was infected, and how present the colistin-resistant superbug is in the U.S. and globally.

“Medicine cabinet is empty for some”

In the U.S., antibiotic resistance has been blamed for at least two million illnesses and 23,000 deaths annually.

The mcr-1 gene was found last year in people and pigs in China, raising alarm.

The potential for the superbug to spread from animals to people is a major concern, Cassell said.

For now, Cassell said people can best protect themselves from it and from other bacteria resistant to antibiotics by thoroughly washing their hands, washing fruits and vegetables thoroughly and preparing foods appropriately.

Experts have warned since the 1990s that especially bad superbugs could be on the horizon, but few drugmakers have attempted to develop drugs against them.

Frieden said the need for new antibiotics is one of the more urgent health problems, as bugs become more and more resistant to current treatments.

“The more we look at drug resistance, the more concerned we are,” Frieden added. “The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients. It is the end of the road for antibiotics unless we act urgently.”

Overprescribing of antibiotics by physicians and in hospitals and their extensive use in food livestock have contributed to the crisis.

More than half of all hospitalized patients will get an antibiotic at some point during their stay. But studies have shown that 30-50 per cent of antibiotics prescribed in hospitals are unnecessary or incorrect, contributing to antibiotic resistance.

Many drugmakers have been reluctant to spend the money needed to develop new antibiotics, preferring to use their resources on medicines for cancer and rare diseases that command very high prices and lead to much larger profits.

In January, dozens of drugmakers and diagnostic companies, including Pfizer, Merck, Johnson and Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline, signed a declaration calling for new incentives from governments to support investment in development of medicines to fight drug-resistant superbugs.

In Canada, the federal health department’s Veterinary Drugs Directorate places polymyxins such as colistin in Category I (“very high importance”) of its list of antimicrobials based on their importance in human medicine.

Polymyxin B, which is approved for veterinary use, was added to Canada’s Veterinary Prescription Drug List in April.

Certain uses of the drug thus require a veterinarian’s prescription, so as “to reinforce prudent use of this class of drugs.”

Veterinary drugs affected by the ruling included Special Formula 17900-Forte Suspension, a Zoetis product to treat mastitis in dairy cattle, and three ointment products sold for use on dogs and cats.

— Reporting for Reuters by Ransdell Pierson; additional reporting by Bill Berkrot.

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The London-based European Medicines Agency (EMA) said it was responding to a European Commission request to update its advice on the use in animals of colistin, which is one of the last-resort antibiotics capable of treating humans with certain bacterial infections.

“Because of (colistin’s) important role as a last defence against antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, the agency will consider if its 2013 advice on the responsible use of colistin in animals, particularly pigs, needs to be updated in light of the recent discovery,” EMA said in a statement.

Colistin has been used for more than 50 years in both animals and people.

In human medicine it is now used as a last-resort for the treatment of people with different kinds of infections caused by multidrug-resistant bacteria, or “superbugs.”

Scientists around the world voiced alarm last year at the discovery in China of a new gene that makes bacteria highly resistant to polymyxins — a class of antibiotics that includes colistin and is widely used in livestock farming.

In Europe 80 per cent of polymyxin sales — mainly colistin — are in Spain, Germany and Italy, according to EMA’S Surveillance of Veterinary Antimicrobial Consumption (ESVAC) report.

Worldwide demand for the antibiotic in agriculture is expected to reach almost 12,000 tonnes per year by the end of 2015, rising to 16,500 tonnes by 2021, according to a 2015 report by the QYResearch Medical Research Centre.

EMA said it would reconvene its Antimicrobial Advice Ad Hoc Expert Group, which issued its previous advice on colistin in 2013, to re-evaluate that guidance, and expects to finalize the update over the next six months.

“Prudent use”

In Canada, the federal health department’s Veterinary Drugs Directorate places polymyxins in Category I (“very high importance”) of its list of antimicrobials based on their importance in human medicine.

Health Canada announced in October that Polymyxin B, which is approved for veterinary use, is to be added to Canada’s Veterinary Prescription Drug List in early April 2016.

Certain uses of the drug would then require a veterinarian’s prescription, so as “to reinforce prudent use of this class of drugs.”

The drugs to be affected by the ruling include Special Formula 17900-Forte Suspension, a Zoetis product to treat mastitis in dairy cattle, and three ointment products sold for use on dogs and cats.

— Reporting for Reuters by Kate Kelland in London. Includes files from AGCanada.com Network staff.

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Agreeing and implementing a global target for agricultural antibiotic use won’t be easy, the review, led by former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill, said, but is vital if life-saving medicines designed to fight bacterial infections are to be kept effective, both for animals and for people.

The review suggested that following examples of Denmark and the Netherlands could make a swift, significant difference.

Denmark has an average of fewer than 50 milligrams of antibiotics used a year per kilogram of livestock, which O’Neill said “may be a good starting point for such a target”.

“Denmark has shown that a very productive farming industry can be sustained alongside relatively low levels of antibiotic use,” the review said.

O’Neill, who presented his review at a briefing in London, said he found it “staggering” that in many countries most of the use of antibiotics is in animals, rather than in humans.

He noted, for example, that in the U.S., more than 70 per cent of the use of medically important antibiotics is in animals, with only 30 per cent in humans.

“This creates a big resistance risk for everyone,” he said. “It’s time for policy makers to act on this.”

Any use of antibiotics promotes the development and spread of so-called “superbugs” — multi-drug-resistant infections that can evade the medicines designed to kill them.

O’Neill was asked last year by Britain’s prime minister to conduct a full review of the problem and suggest ways to combat it. In his initial report, he estimated antibiotic and microbial resistance could kill an extra 10 million people a year and cost up to US$100 trillion by 2050 if it is not brought under control.

International alarm about the superbug threat is rising after the discovery in China of a gene called mcr-1 that makes bacteria resistant to all known antibiotics.

Research published over the weekend said mcr-1 had also been found in bacteria samples Denmark, suggesting it is already spreading around the world.

Jeremy Farrar, an infectious disease expert and director of the Wellcome Trust health charity, said urgent action is needed.

“We can now be certain that the health of livestock animals, and how we care for them, is inextricably linked to our own health and the effectiveness of medicines we rely on every day,” he said in a statement.

“We need international governments, policy makers and the agricultural industry to coordinate their actions and set tangible targets for the reduction and better use of antibiotics in animals.”

— Kate Kelland is a Reuters health and science correspondent based in London.

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The discovery was described as “alarming” by scientists, who called for urgent restrictions on the use of polymyxins, a class of antibiotics that includes the drug colistin and is widely used in livestock farming.

“All use of polymyxins must be minimised as soon as possible and all unnecessary use stopped,” said Laura Piddock, a professor of microbiology at Britain’s Birmingham University who was asked to comment on the finding.

Researchers led by Hua Liu from the South China Agricultural University who published their work in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal found the gene, called mcr-1, on plasmids — mobile DNA that can be easily copied and transferred between different bacteria.

This suggests “an alarming potential” for it to spread and diversify between bacterial populations, they said.

The team already has evidence of the gene being transferred between common bacteria such as E. coli, which causes urinary tract and many other types of infection, and Klesbsiella pneumoniae, which causes pneumonia and other infections.

This suggests “the progression from extensive drug resistance to pandrug resistance is inevitable,” they said.

“(And) although currently confined to China, mcr-1 is likely to emulate other resistance genes… and spread worldwide.”

Indian precedent

The discovery of the spreading mcr-1 resistance gene echoes news from 2010 of another so-called “superbug” gene, NDM-1, which emerged in India and rapidly spread around the world.

Piddock and others said global surveillance for mcr-1 resistance is now essential to try to prevent the spread of polymyxin-resistant bacteria.

China is one of the world’s largest users and producers of colistin for agriculture and veterinary use.

Worldwide demand for the antibiotic in agriculture is expected to reach almost 12,000 tonnes per year by the end of 2015, rising to 16,500 tonnes by 2021, according to a 2015 report by the QYResearch Medical Research Centre.

In Europe, 80 percent of polymyxin sales — mainly colistin — are in Spain, Germany and Italy, according to the European Medicines Agency’s Surveillance of Veterinary Antimicrobial Consumption (ESVAC) report.

For the China study, researchers collected bacteria samples from pigs at slaughter across four provinces, and from pork and chicken sold in 30 open markets and 27 supermarkets in Guangzhou between 2011 and 2014. They also analysed bacteria from patients with infections at two hospitals in Guangdong and Zhejiang.

They found a high prevalence of the mcr-1 gene in E coli samples from animals and raw meat. Worryingly, the proportion of positive samples increased from year to year, they said, and mcr-1 was also found in 16 E. coli and K. pneumoniae samples from 1,322 hospitalised patients.

David Paterson and Patrick Harris from Australia’s University of Queensland, writing a commentary in the same journal, said the links between agricultural use of colistin, colistin resistance in slaughtered animals, colistin resistance in food, and colistin resistance in humans were now complete.

“One of the few solutions to uncoupling these connections is limitation or cessation of colistin use in agriculture,” they said. “Failure to do so will create a public health problem of major dimensions.”

— Kate Kelland is a Reuters health and science correspondent based in London, England.

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Subway, Starbucks, KFC and Domino’s Pizza were among the industry leaders graded “F” for their antibiotic policies in the report from consumer and health groups, titled “Chain Reaction,” released Tuesday.

The groups, which did not release results to companies prior to publication, based their grades on public statements, survey responses and correspondence with individual chains. As a result, companies given failing grades were not immediately able to comment.

An estimated 70 per cent of antibiotics important to human health are sold for use in meat and dairy production.

Concern is growing among public health experts that the overuse of such drugs, particularly those important to human medicine, are contributing to rising numbers of life-threatening human infections from antibiotic-resistant bacteria dubbed “superbugs.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that two million people are infected with drug-resistant bacteria each year and 23,000 die.

“From bacon cheeseburgers to chicken nuggets, most meat served by America’s chain restaurants comes from animals raised in industrial-scale facilities, where they are routinely fed antibiotics to prevent disease that is easily spread in crowded, unsanitary, stressful conditions,” said Kari Hamerschlag, a lead author of the report who is senior program manager at Friends of the Earth.

Subway was cited, in particular, for failing to publicly state a policy or plan to cut antibiotic use in the meats it buys, despite repeated requests by the report’s authors for clarification.

Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panera Bread finished with “A” grades, having won loyal followings for policies that include strict limits on antibiotic use.

Chick-fil-A, which is making meaningful progress toward its goal of only buying chicken raised without antibiotics by 2019, got a “B” in the report.

McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts got “C” grades. McDonald’s plans to only source chicken raised without antibiotics important to human medicine by 2017. Dunkin’ Donuts aims to prohibit suppliers from using medically important antibiotics or antimicrobials in healthy animals, but it has not set a timeline.

Other groups contributing to the report included the Natural Resources Defense Council, Consumers Union, Food Animal Concerns Trust, Keep Antibiotics Working and the Center for Food Safety.

— Lisa Baertlein is a Reuters correspondent covering the U.S. restaurant and grocery sectors from Los Angeles.

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At its May convention members strongly supported a resolution calling for the federal government to take action before a health crisis develops.

Newdale farmer and retired nurse, Enid Clark, spoke to the matter during the resolution debate.

She said a dialogue is needed across all federal departments related to human and animal health, involving organizations and groups in an effort to halt the use of antibiotics for reasons other than just fighting disease, she said. It needs to happen before the threat from superbugs resistant to antibiotics gets even more serious.

“We’ve become complacent,” Clark said. “Unfortunately, with the overuse of antibiotics in humans and their continued use in animal, poultry and fish feed just to stimulate growth and to keep those pathogens under control, these wily pathogens have done what pathogens always do. They develop resistance to the drugs and become stronger and more virulent.”

It was one of a half-dozen resolutions at the May 8 convention attended by about 70 women bringing proxy votes representing the total 371 membership.

The rural women’s organization, which has nearly 400 members, also reaffirmed a resolution passed five years ago that called then for immediate action to stop violence against Aboriginal women. In 2010 the WI spoke of the deplorable situations faced by many Aboriginal women including their vulnerability due to systemic poverty and discrimination.

“It’s timely to bring this resolution back and reaffirm it with all the calls for government inquiries around this issue,” said Clark. “We want to add our voice to it again.”

The MWI also supported three other resolutions, including those calling for additional recycling strategies to reduce heavier plastics used in product packaging, and another for fast tracking the changeover to digital mammography equipment, noting Manitoba is one of the last provinces to make the switch over from analog technology.

One resolution calls for affixing ‘long load’ signage on the rear of transport trucks hauling multiple trailers. Drivers access a number of factors including weather and road conditions before deciding to pass one of these vehicles, and cautions about the length of the vehicle being passed could help prevent accidents.

Brandon-based MWI president Donna Young said in an interview the provincial group looks forward to a strong year ahead.

Members were especially buoyed by reports of Women’s Institutes elsewhere in Canada being revived and attracting new members, and they’re working hard to make that happen here too. There’s been lots of interest shown in their three-year food security programming, she said.

“I think the next year will be very exciting for us,” Young said.

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