GARNER, NC – A Butterball LLC official confirmed the launch of a new line of antibiotic-free ground turkey meat that will be sold under the Farm to Family brand. Bloomberg first reported the launch.
Butterball joins other major poultry processors committing to a transition to antibiotic-free poultry production. In 2014, Cargill announced that whole turkeys and fresh, bone-in turkey breasts raised without growth-promoting antibiotics would be sold under the company’s Shady Brook Farms and Honeysuckle White brands. Springdale, Arkansas-based Tyson Foods set a goal to eliminate the use of human antibiotics in its US broiler chicken flocks by 2017, and Perdue Farms, Salisbury, Maryland, removed all human antibiotics from its poultry feed in 2007 followed by the removal of antibiotics from all the company’s hatcheries in March 2014.
Butterball expects to generate $100 million in sales over the next three to four years from Farm to Family products, which will represent as much as 10 percent of the company’s products within the next 12 months. The line will include patties and other ground turkey products. Farm to Family items will be available in the southeast, northeast and Midwest, with additional items to come in 2017.
Butterball is co-owned by Shawnee, Kan.-based Seaboard Corp. and Maxwell Farms LLC.
