New Delhi: The company that operates Domino's Pizza and Dunkin Donuts in India has announced a road map to eliminate from its fare chicken exposed to unnecessary antibiotics, days after an environmental group questioned the procurement practices of multiple fast-food chains in India.

Jubilant Foodworks' three-phase programme will start in 2018, with the company ensuring that raw chicken is sourced only from "authorised farms where permitted antibiotics are administered only for disease treatment under a veterinarian-defined health-care programme".

The New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment had earlier this week claimed that several fast-food companies had eliminated or planned to eliminate chicken exposed to needless antibiotics from their food chains, but had not announced similar plans for India.

The CSE had said it had sought responses from 11 multinational companies and three domestic companies but none of the six that responded had shared any timelines for the elimination of unnecessary antibiotics from their food chains in India.

Jubilant said it would from next year eliminate the use of chicken from farms where antibiotics are used as growth promoters, a practice driving the misuse of antibiotics on poultry farms.

The company said it would appoint veterinarians to monitor hygiene at poultry farms, the complete bird health-care programme including vaccinations and the use of antibiotics in diseased birds. It said the company would conduct regular tests to check the presence of antibiotics in poultry feed, water and the birds.

In the second and third phases (between 2019 and 2021), the company said, it would move to eliminate the use of high-priority and critically important antibiotics except as a second line of treatment in diseased birds.

The CSE welcomed the road map.

"We are delighted to know that Jubilant has committed to stopping antibiotic misuse in chicken," Chandra Bhushan, deputy director at the CSE, said.

"We encourage other companies to follow suit and show they care about the Indian consumer and are keen to no longer contribute to the rising antibiotic resistance."

Public health experts have repeatedly warned that the abuse of antibiotics, whether in humans or animals, contributes to the emergence of drug-resistant microbes.

Earlier this year, a survey of poultry farms in Punjab had revealed that many of them used antibiotics as growth promoters.