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Panera Bread and Chipotle led the fast-food pack by earning A's on the new annual report card from a coalition of public interest groups that annually ranks corporate efforts to remove antibiotics from their poultry, beef and pork supplies. Twelve of the other 25 listed companies also made progress eliminating the drugs, but the report says they need to catch up with the A-listers and pay as much attention to beef and pork as to poultry.

Chick-fil-A announced this week that it will stop using meat from chickens raised with antibiotics within five years. The chain said consumer demands sparked the change; Chipotle and Panera Bread have taken similar measures recently. "This ... surfaced as the No. 1 issue for our customers," said Tim Tassopoulos, Chick-fil-A's executive vice president of operations.

Poultry company Perdue Foods became the target of animal welfare organizations after an undercover investigation by Mercy For Animals (MFA) revealed illegal animal abuse at two of the company's contract farms. Almost 182,000 people signed a petition urging Perdue to adopt better animal welfare standards. After negotiations with MFA and other groups, Perdue announced new animal welfare policies this week. And animal welfare organizations are praising the company's new policies. MFA described it as the "most comprehensive animal welfare policy ever adopted by a major chicken producer." Perdue is one of only four companies that control most of the chicken industry.

Nestlé announced a pledge to improve the welfare of the farm animals in its supply chain, following the signature of a partnership agreement with NGO World Animal Protection.The agreement means that the hundreds of thousands of farms that supply Nestlé with their dairy, meat, poultry and eggs will have to comply with tighter animal welfare standards. Nestlé, with its global purchasing footprint, also becomes the first major food company to form an international partnership with an animal welfare NGO.

Starbucks recently updated its animal welfare standards. They include phasing out sow gestation crates and cages for chickens, eliminating the use of artificial growth hormones, and eliminating the use of fast growing practices for poultry. The standards will aso address concerns related to dehorning, tail docking, and castration, and supporting the responsible use of antibiotics.

According to a report issued this week by the NGO Mighty Earth, the U.S. meat industry is largely responsible for what has become the largest "dead zone" ever in the Gulf of Mexico. While past studies have showcased the meat and poultry sectors' impact on both the environment and public health, Mighty's study sheds light on the large agribusiness companies the NGO says contribute to the Gulf's ongoing environmental degradation attributed to algae blooms.

British fast food restaurants and grocery chains, including Tesco, Morrisons and McDonald's, buy their chicken from Cargill, which feeds its poultry with imported soy, much of it apparently coming from the Bolivian Amazon and Brazilian Cerrado - areas rapidly being deforested for new soy plantations.