More Funky Chickens?

 Today is cyber Monday, but if you’re like many Americans, you might already be considering what you will be eating for your Christmas dinner meal. My favorite meals of the Christmas season actually do not involve turkey. I love good dishes that involve some good, tender chicken! Chicken is loved by so many especially in the United States because it is a great lean source of protein and is able to more readily take in the dry and wet ingredient flavors that can be paired with it.

I was able to relate a recent post to the types of chicken that the caring feast provider should be looking for. But some new information I recently came across can even provide more insight into some great sources of chicken which is safe for the whole family!

Know your chickens:

There is a general rule which we were able to unearth last week in poultry categories. There are of course cagefree, free-range, and finally USDA organic chickens. But your hungry relatives might simply laugh at these categories and suggest that antibiotics used in Chicken actually just serve to keep these hens safe. Do cagefree and organic hens then contain harmful bacteria that these antibiotics fought against? Well, no! And this is why; bacteria come from something called CAFOs.

But what are CAFOs?

CAFOs stand for “confined animal feeding operations”. This is the category that many chicken farmers in the vast food industry view their food in. And this is also the category which is defined by strict regulations of use of antibiotics. Chickens have to be kept safe as an investment, but also for you and I. But does it work? We have discovered by now that these low doses of antibiotics over time actually contribute to the breeding of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria. So what do we watch out for?

Campylobacter Strain:

This bacterium was fostered in chicken which is on a type of antibiotic called fluorquinolones.

Bacteria resistant to synercid:

Synercid is an antimicrobial drug which fosters bacteria which promotes diseases similar to salmonella sicknesses.

Salmonella Bacteria:

There are many bacteria which fall under this category, and we even have some benign strains of this in our own intestines which serves a useful purpose. But Salmonella is now becoming more resistant to drugs than ever before in chickens. This is why everyone should cook meat thoroughly, and might be something which we have learned to live with, but will become increasingly prevalent in the future.