Despite the well-documented health and environmental hazards, most consumers are still unaware that well over 90 percent of all chicken meat and eggs sold in the US come from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

Most people are also unaware that CAFO foods are very different, from a nutritional standpoint, from animals raised on pasture, and that while they may be inexpensive at the checkout line, there are significant hidden costs, including the cost to your health, associated with this kind of food production.

One hidden health hazard is foodborne illness, which last year alone struck more than 19,000 out of a population of 48 million residents across 10 states.1 The most frequent foodborne infection was caused by salmonella, accounting for 38 percent of reported infections.

The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) attributes nearly 133,000 illnesses each year to contaminated chicken parts. Frontline cites an even higher number, claiming salmonella contaminated chicken sickens an estimated 200,000 Americans each year.

Drug-Resistant Food Poisoning Also on the Rise

An even greater risk is contracting an antibiotic-resistant illness, which is occurring more and more these days. Antibiotic resistance is driven by the routine practice of feeding food animals antibiotics.

Agriculture accounts for about 80 percent of all antibiotics used in the US, so it’s a significant source of antibiotic exposure, and it’s the continuous use of low dose antibiotics that permits bacteria to survive and become increasingly hardy and drug resistant.

In 2013, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found antibiotic-resistant bacteria in 39 percent of raw chicken parts.

Multiple-drug resistance is also on the rise. Between 1973 and 2011, there were 55 antibiotic-resistant foodborne outbreaks in the US, and more than half of them involved pathogens resistant to five or more antibiotics. 2^{http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/05/30/cafo-chicken-hidden-health-hazards.aspx#_edn2}