Reuters has reported that Tyson Foods has stopped using Gentamicin, an antibiotic considered “highly important” for human use, at its 35 company hatcheries. Hatcheries are where chicks are born and kept for a brief time before being moved to poultry farms.

Tyson is the nation’s largest chicken producer, and a key supplier for McDonald’s, which recently announced that it “will gradually stop buying chicken raised with antibiotics vital to fighting human infections” for its U.S. restaurants.

P.J. Huffstutter (@pjhuffstutter1) reports:

 

Tyson has reduced the volume of medically-important antibiotics used in its chicken business by 84 percent since 2011 and the “vast majority of the antibiotics used to raise our chickens are never used in humans,” according to a company statement.