Tyson may have decided to stop feeding antibiotics to birds at hatcheries, but it’s still using the drugs for “disease prevention” at chicken farms.When it comes to reducing the enormous amount of antibiotics being fed to animals solely for growth-promotion, just about any news is good news. So we welcome today’s announcement from Tyson that it will cease using antibiotics in its hatcheries, but still have concerns about the drugs being fed to birds once they leave the hatchery. The chicken giant said today that it has “successfully developed and tested new protocols that will enable us to discontinue the use of antibiotics in our hatcheries.” According to the company, one of the main reasons for making this change is that the antibiotic Tyson typically used in hatcheries is important to human health. The over-use of antibiotics leads to the development of drug-resistant pathogens, so using a drug that is important to human health just to fatten up chickens ends up putting human lives at risk. Our lingering concern is in Tyson’s statement about antibiotic use in chickens after they leave the hatcheries. “[W]e sometimes use FDA-approved antibiotics in the feed, but only when prescribed by a veterinarian to treat or prevent disease,” reads the statement. Once again, we come up against the “disease prevention” excuse.