Two of the nation's largest chicken producers - including Maryland's Perdue Farms - are challenging Tyson Foods' advertising, claiming in a federal lawsuit that it's misleading consumers into believing that the Arkansas company's birds are healthier to eat than competitors'.
At a hearing yesterday in Baltimore's U.S. District Court, Perdue and Mississippi's Sanderson Farms complained that Tyson's ads say the company's poultry products don't contain antibiotics thought to affect drug resistance in people.
In fact, none of the three producers' poultry includes those kinds of antibiotics, but Tyson is the only one making that point through print advertising, commercials and billboards.
The plaintiffs asked the court to bar Tyson from using such claims in its marketing, arguing that shoppers could infer that others must be using dangerous drugs if Tyson took the trouble to point out that it isn't. Meanwhile, Tyson asked that the lawsuit be dismissed.
More testimony and closing arguments on the motions will be heard today.
It's a case full of legalese, fluctuating U.S. Department of Agriculture decisions, definitions of what an antibiotic is and what claims can be made about its use. It also underscores the country's concerns about food safety, which have escalated in recent years - so much that simply saying a food is somewhat drug-free can boost sales significantly and hurt others' bottom lines.
Sanderson says it lost a $4 million account to Tyson because of the company's ad campaign. And Perdue says it lost about $10 million in revenue since last year.
"This is a very hot topic with consumers across the board, whether they're talking about milk or whether they're talking about meat. And they are caring a lot more about what's being carried in their products," said Nancy M. Childs, chairwoman of the department of food marketing at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.
Recent food safety issues arising in China, which has exported contaminated plums and pea pods, along with domestic concerns about bacterial contamination of bagged spinach, Taco Bell lettuce and Peter Pan peanut butter, have raised the public's consciousness when it comes to watching what they eat. An organic food fad that says natural is better has also swayed the public, making it lucrative to use marketing terms such as "antibiotic-free" and "hormone-free."
