Subway Provides Some Clarification

Last week, Subway announced that it has elevated its current antibiotic-free brand policy and will begin to transition to serving only protein from animals that have never received antibiotics. Social media has blown up with story after story about how this policy would affect individual farms and ranches health management programs. On Friday, Subway provided more clarification around their earlier announcement. Field Reporter Greg Martin shares a portion of their statement
Martin: “We are committed to providing our customers with safe, affordable, and sustainable food. We believe that safe food comes from healthy animals that are well cared for. We support the highest standards of animal welfare practices available as well as the advancements that come from continued scientific research.Our goal is to reduce and eliminate the use of antibiotics in the food we serve. Elimination of antibiotics use in our supply chain will take time, but we are working diligently with our suppliers to find quality solutions that also ensure our high quality and food safety standards are upheld and not compromised in any way. Our plan is to eliminate the use of antibiotics in phases with the initial focus on the poultry products that we serve in the U.S…That said, we recognize that antibiotics are critical tools for keeping animals healthy and that they should be used responsibly to preserve their effectiveness in veterinary and human medicine. Our policy is that antibiotics can be used to treat, control and prevent disease, but not for growth promotion of farm animals.“
So why didn’t they just say that in the first place? And why did they delete comments on their Facebook page that didn’t agree with their stance?