Coming soon: Antibiotic-free chicken on your plate

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http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/premium/singapore/antibiotic-free-chicken-your-plate-soon-20140225

In 2013, Kee Song Brothers Poultry Industries teamed up with Otemchi Biotechnologies to run a large-scale trial to introduce a lactobacillus strain into the feed for chickens.

This is a departure from the industry standard of using antibiotics for disease prevention and enhancing the birds' growth.

The trial involving 180,000 birds on Kee Song's farm ended with a 98 per cent survival rate, higher than the 95 per cent average survival rate for chickens fed antibiotics.

It was an outcome which Ong Kian San, Kee Song's managing director, would have wanted, for the homegrown poultry farm has an eye on producing antibiotic-free chicken on a much larger scale.

Two of its premium lines of birds, Imperial Cordyceps Chicken and CaroGold Chicken, are antibiotic-free, and the Health Promotion Board has put its "Healthier Choice" symbol on CaroGold Chicken.