Yum Brands Inc.'s U.S. Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) chain recently announced it will give its U.S. poultry suppliers until the end of 2018 to stop using antibiotics important to human medicine. KFC is the second-largest U.S. chicken chain, after Chick-fil-A. The latter has promised to switch to poultry raised without any antibiotics at all by the end of 2019.
KFC is the last of the big three chicken restaurants to join the effort to curb the use of antibiotics in animals. The shift will apply to its 4,200 restaurants that are supplied by its 2,000 domestic chicken farms.
“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,” explains KFC U.S. President Kevin Hochman.
