chicken droppings

[thundercrack]

hi all. does anyone know if chicken droppings and antibiotics are still put in chicken food? I used to work for an agricultural merchant and we used to put dried chicken droppings (which were bought from battery chicken farms) back into the chicken feed as we were processing it into pellets. antibiotics were added to keep the hens healthy and a dye to colour the yolks. does this still go on?
thanks, alf.

[Noweia]

I was unaware chicken droppings were ever put in chicken feed! - how long ago was this?

Antibiotics added to feed as growth promoters (sub-therapeutic levels) are now banned in the UK and in the EU but not in the US.

Antibiotics may still be added to food to treat disease (it's only practical way to give thousands of birds treatment!) but this is not allowed if there is no disease problem on the farm.

[thundercrack]

hi, chicken droppings were put in to chicken food in the eightys, I observed this both in the animal food production plant and at a battery chicken farm just out side london, where they would heap the droppings into a big rotating dryer and bag up the droppings at the other end. apparantley some bod found that there was protein in the droppings and didn't want to waste it. I worked in the bussiness for seven years and it went on all that time at least. mind you, that was the time when they were feeding ground up dead cows back to the cows in the animal food, which we drank as milk.
alf.

[Noweia]

I know that with the ban on animal products being fed to animals in 1996, that the only animal product fed to poultry (and pigs) now is fish meal - all other forms (ie poultry meal, meat and bone meal from cows, sheep etc) are now banned.