According to a new Frontline Special "The Trouble With Chicken," the U.S. poultry industry is pumping out birds with more and stronger strains of bacteria like Salmonella.
Chicken is the most popular protein in the United States and the drive to sustain a hungry market while keeping costs low means small animal enclosures and the use of antibiotics. More antibiotics are sold for animal use than human usein this country.
Despite that use, and at times because of it 1.2 million casesof Salmonella occur every year sending 23,000 people to the hospital with sometimes fatal results.
Consumer Reports found that 97 percent of the poultry they tested last year had bacteria that made humans sick. The tested chicken was both organic and nonorganic labeled.
What can we do about this? What are federal regulators doing to stop it?
Guest:
- David Hoffman, journalist and filmmaker on the Frontline special "The Trouble With Chicken"