Chicago Public Schools Largest District to Serve Chicken Raised without Antibiotics

School Food FOCUS and Pew Empower Nation’s School Districts to Follow Suit

NOV 1, 2011 – Chicago Public Schools (CPS) today began serving local chicken raised without antibiotics to students in 473 schools. This development comes on the heels of a fresh chicken purchase direct from the USDA earlier this fall. The district's new scratch-cooked chicken program includes about 1.2 million pounds from Amish farms that do not use antibiotics, for a total of about two million pounds of fresh chicken in the 2011-12 school year. Students will be offered bone-in chicken two to three times each month ... Read full statement

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• Call your principal, your representatives on the school board, and your school superintendent.  Tell them that you want what Chicago’s students have: meat raised without the routine use of antibiotics. Click here to download a letter that you can send telling them what steps they can take to protect our children's health.
  
  
• Article: Amish-raised chicken on CPS lunch menu - The Chicago Tribune - November 1, 2011
  


• Teleconference Briefing: Chicago Public Schools’ primary foodservice provider, Chartwells-Thompson Hospitality and organizations including the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming hosted a teleconference on Tuesday, November 1, to announce the details of a first-of-its-kind initiative to serve chicken raised without antibiotics to the city’s K-12 students.


• Webinar: "Antibiotic use in poultry production: Human health impacts and what school food service can do." An online seminar designed to help school officials acquire poultry for their school lunch programs from food animal producers who raise animals without overusing or misusing antibiotics.


• Purchasing Guidelines: Guidelines that Minimize the Use of Antibiotics in Poultry Production, Recommendations for Schools and Other Institutional Food Service Buyers.