A TikTok user responded to the claim, "I'm gonna pretend I never saw this." A different person joked, "Listen … if any food is going to take me out, best believe it'll be a #2 with a large Coke. Thank you!"
The claim — which is also circulating on Instagram and Facebook — first surfaced online in October 2023 with a blog post by Moms Across America, a nonprofit organization that claims to warn parents about alleged health risks in food and medicine. Zen Honeycutt, the founder and executive of the organization, later claimed on a podcast: "We found an aviary contraceptive, Nicarbazin, in Chick-fil-A sandwiches. So we are extremely concerned about people who have been eating Chick-fil-A. We know it's quite addictive."
The claim was based on a test conducted by Moms Across America that found traces of the veterinary medicine in one Chick-fil-A sandwich — a sample size that is too small to provide sufficient evidence of a widespread health risk. No other studies have detected the drug in the restaurant's products. We've reached out to the nonprofit, as well as the restaurant chain, for more information, and we're waiting for responses.
According to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO),
Per the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the drug also "interferes with the formation of the vitelline membrane, separating the egg yolk and egg white," which helps with population control of species including Canadian geese. Federal regulators have allowed poultry farmers to use the veterinary drug since 1955, according to the EPA. There's no evidence of Nicarbazin being detected in other food.
In spring 2024, the company updated its steroid and hormone policy for chicken suppliers, publishing on its website:
All our chicken is real breast meat with no fillers or added hormones or no artificial or added hormones are allowed in the production of any poultry in the United States.
Chick-fil-A® restaurants in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico transitioned to chicken raised with No Antibiotics Important to Human Medicine (NAIHM) in the spring of 2024. NAIHM restricts the use of those antibiotics that are important to human medicine and used to treat people. Animal antibiotics are used to address sickness and protect overall animal health. In accordance with FDA requirements, all antibiotics must be cleared from the chicken's system before it is considered available for the chicken supply. The United States Department of Agriculture audits and verifies that suppliers are meeting the requirements of the Chick-fil-A NAIHM commitment.
Snopes reached out to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for comment on the validity of the allegations involving Chick-fil-A. We also asked if the agency had done independent studies on this claim or Nicarbazin in food products in general and whether it had more information to share. A representative said the agency does not comment on specific studies but rather evaluates such research
According to the EPA, someone would need to "consume prohibitively large amounts" of Nicarbazin for it to pose a toxic risk. The agency said in a 2005 report on Nicarbazin:
Nicarbazin has been a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved veterinary drug for use as an anticoccidial agent in broiler chickens since 1955. FDA has established a tolerance of 4 parts per million for Nicarbazin residues in uncooked chicken muscle, skin, liver, and kidney (21 Code of Federal Regulations 556.445). FDA has established a feed 3 additive tolerance of 125 ppm in chickens (21 Code of Federal Regulations 558.366) for use of Nicarbazin in feed to prevent outbreaks of faecal and intestinal coccidiosis …
The potential for human exposure and mammals (e.g. dogs) is anticipated to be low from the use of Nicarbazin fed to resident Canada geese. The WHO studies indicate that non-target mammals (including humans) would have to consume prohibitively large amounts of the product to produce any toxic effects.
Claim Based on Purported Test of One Sandwich
Moms Across America, which has a history of spreading misleading claims about vaccines, claimed
A Chick-fil-A sandwich tested positive for a veterinary drug, Nicarbazin, an antiparasitic which is also a known aviary contraceptive. While the levels were low, no reliable assumptions or predictions can be made regarding the accumulation and effects of such a contraceptive drug when consumed on a daily or weekly or even monthly basis by potentially millions of Americans.
Moms Across America also published a detailed run-down of the test's findings. That full lab report did not include specifics on the amount of Nicarbazin that was supposedly detected in the chicken sandwich, describing it only as having "low levels."
Also unknown was the specific Chick-fil-A location from which the sandwich was purchased.
Moms Across America performed the test at the Health Research Institute. In an interview with Snopes, the institute's chief research scientist and CEO, Joe Fagan, confirmed the group's findings (that Nicarbazin was detected in a sandwich) while also highlighting the small scope of the study. He said a single sandwich is not a large enough sample size to make a claim about all of the restaurant's sandwiches. Fagan said:
We can't really tell that [presence of Nicarbazin] from testing one sample. If we had tested samples from five different establishments in five different states, and they all came up with Nicarbazin, then you would be able to ask the question, is this a Chick-fil-A wide problem? It begins to look like that. But we did not make such a claim. We make a claim about the sample delivered to us. That's all we do. And the fact that that particular pesticide was in that particular sandwich is an indication that it can happen, but it doesn't prove that it's everywhere.
In our interview request to Moms Across America, we asked for its response to the assertion that the test is not sufficient evidence to claim that all Chick-fil-A sandwiches could test positive for traces of the veterinary medicine. We also asked if the group had conducted other studies, possibly using a larger sample size, and for the exact amount of Nicarbazin found in the one sample tested.
The Moms Group Behind Chick-fil-A Rumor
According to its website, Moms Across America aims "to educate and empower mothers and others with actions and solutions to create healthy communities."
But the nonprofit has faced scrutiny for making sweeping claims without sufficient evidence to support them. Groups that have accused Moms Across America of spreading misinformation include Impossible Foods, a meat substitute manufacturer. In 2019, Impossible Foods offered a point-by-point rebuttal to the nonprofit's claims that its burgers tested positive for carcinogens.
Moms Across America's "About Us" page lists Stephanie Seneff, a noted purveyor of
Moms Across America said the Chick-fil-A test was supported by other organizations such as Children's Health Defense and the Centner Academy, both of which have a history of promoting misinformation about science and medicine. (The Children's Health Defense website prominently features anti-vaccination and COVID conspiracy theories and touts Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as its chairman — while the Centner Academy is a Florida-based private school whose policies declare, "We do not support the mainstream COVID narrative, critical race theory, and gender fluidity.")
Snopes has fact-checked many food-quality claims in the past, including allegations that pet food includes the remains of euthanized pets, McDonald's food doesn't rot and mRNA from COVID-19 vaccines is in the food supply.
Senior Staff Reporter Alex Kasprak contributed to this story.