Tyson says it's reducing use of antibiotic in chickens to ease consumer worries

Wednesday, February 20th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) _ Tyson Foods said it will stop using an antibiotic in its broiler chickens in response to consumer worries that the drug makes people more susceptible to drug-resistant bacteria.

Springdale-based Tyson said that its use of fluoroquinolone was already minimal and that it did not believe the antibiotic did any harm.

Tyson said it would switch to another antibiotic.

Last year, the company said, fluoroquinolones were used in less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the 2.1 billion broiler chickens it produced for human consumption.

The government wants to ban Baytril, a type of fluoroquinolone sold by Bayer Corp., from being used in poultry because of evidence that the drug's use in chicken makes people more vulnerable to drug-resistant bacteria.

While some fluoroquinolones are sold to treat animals, others are used to treat thousands of Americans who get food poisoning from campylobacter, a type of bacteria found in chicken.

Tyson has no plans to drop the use of fluoroquinolones in its breeding flocks, which lay eggs but are not sold as food.

``Continued improvements in animal husbandry and increased bio-security measures have enabled us to reduce the use of antibiotics in recent years,'' said Patrick Pilkington, Tyson vice president of live production services.