When you pay top dollar for a chicken that’s labeled “100% natural,” you assume that means something — you know, like, that the chicken actually is natural. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. In fact, that chicken may contain substances that are so unnatural they actually get humans high.
A lawsuit recently filed by consumer advocacy groups against Sanderson Farms claimed that ketamine and several other pharmaceuticals were found in their so-called all-natural chicken during USDA tests. So much for truth in advertising!
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Apparently, the three groups — Center for Food Safety, the Organic Consumers Association and Friends of the Earth — learned about the test results through a request sanctioned by the Freedom of Information Act and went on to file a complaint.
And it wasn’t even a scary fluke. Bloomberg reports that the USDA did 69 tests on this poultry over a yearlong period and the results came back decidedly “unnatural” a staggering third of the time. Ketamine wasn’t the only chemical found, either. They discovered various antibiotics, opiates, pesticides and synthetic hormones. Are you freaking kidding?!
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Sanderson Farms, who produced this chicken, has a history of being oddly in favor of antibiotics, saying removing them was just a “gimmick” to charge people more money. Well, that’s one way of looking at it… Or you could think of it as a valuable and necessary measure to help preserve people’s health, not to mention a way of maintaining transparency in food labels — which would require actually keeping said antibiotics, drugs, hormones and other creep-tastic substances out of their chicken.
The vegetarian life is looking better and better, isn’t it?
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