Organic Chicken Healthier

The NIH's Environmental Health Perspectives (Volume 113, Number 5, May 2005) reported that there exists a "persistent problem" with poultry in the US.

Poultry's Persistence Problem: Drug-Resistant Campylobacter in Chicken
Mounting evidence suggests that the poultry industry's use of antibiotics promotes antibiotic resistance among the foodborne bacteria that infect humans. One such bacterium is Campylobacter, a pathogen common to chicken products. Every year more than 1 million Americans develop Campylobacter-induced food poisoning from eating undercooked contaminated chicken. Resistant strains of Campylobacter are a growing public health threat, particularly among elderly and immunocompromised patients. This month, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health provide evidence suggesting that chickens raised without antibiotics are less likely to carry antibiotic-resistant strains of Campylobacter.

The link I provided above will take you to the research abstract available online.

The question raised is "Would you consider eating chicken laden with antibiotics and pesticides if you knew how sick it may make you?"

In the above study, researchers tested chicken products from conventional manufacturers (Tyson and Perdue) and antibiotic-free producers (Bell & Evans and Eberly) all of whom claim to have stopped using fluoroquinolones (FQs), a class of antimicrobials used to control the bacterium Escherichia coli in broiler chickens.

The results showed: Producers that abstained from using FQs decreased the likelihood of Campylobacter contamination in their products. Conventionally-grown chicken products were up to 460 times more likely to carry resistant strains than their antibiotic-free counterparts. FQ resistance in conventional chicken products persisted for one year after its industrial use was stopped.

This information gives you one more reason to choose organic chicken and poultry products for you and your family!