SALISBURY, MD. — Poultry processor Perdue Farms debuted a new snack product on Nov. 8 without any meat involved.

The company decided to launch Chix Mix, a limited-edition snack food inspired by the all-vegetarian diet fed to chickens, which is made up of corn, wheat and edamame. Perdue noted that it added some BBQ spices for human consumption.

“Perdue is proud to highlight our gold-standard animal care practices and all-natural bird feed in this one-of-a-kind, chicken-feed-inspired snack,” said David Zucker, executive vice president of marketing at Perdue Farms. “We believe you are what you eat, and at a critical point in time when competitors are going back to using preventative antibiotics, we want to reinforce our commitment to feeding our chickens, and your family, clean food.”

In the last few years, consumers continue to want more details about various aspects of food processing. According to the Power of Meat report compiled by 210 Analytics, the North American Meat Institute and FMI, 63% of consumers want to know where their food comes from. 

Perdue expects for this snack to showcase its commitment to using the highest quality vegetarian diet with no animal by-products or antibiotics ever. 

“Over the last 20 years, Perdue has worked diligently to achieve No Antibiotics Ever raised chickens,” said Dr. Bruce Stewart-Brown, senior vice president of technical services and innovation at Perdue Farms. “To be successful, we improved our approach to animal care and the way we feed our chickens. We removed animal by-products and antibiotics and put in products that promote good gut health such as oregano and thyme.”

In 2014, Perdue said that it eliminated routine use of all human antibiotics from every production step of poultry processing.