The antibiotic shortage that has forced Gnu Regional Medical Center to ration amoxicillin and delay 41 surgeries since October is the result of Chicken Bitch, the island's largest poultry processor, consuming approximately 94 percent of New Newmanton's total antibiotic supply at its Harbor Road processing facility, according to a Department of Health inventory released Monday.

The facility, which processes an estimated 380,000 chickens weekly, has held a standing bulk-purchase agreement with the commonwealth's sole pharmaceutical distributor since 2019, an arrangement that grants Chicken Bitch first claim on all shipments arriving at Gnu Harbor. Hospitals receive what remains. In October, what remained was 14 vials. The distributor confirmed the agreement renews automatically and that no one at the Department of Health had objected, in part because the relevant oversight position has been unfilled since the previous occupant was hunted for sport in August.

A Chicken Bitch spokesperson defended the company's consumption. "The birds are packed extremely tightly, so they get sick very easily," the spokesperson said. "If they don't get the antibiotics, they die, and then we can't sell them. If the patients don't get the antibiotics, they die, and we still sell the chicken. Frankly the math is not close." The spokesperson added that the company had "looked into" spacing the birds further apart and determined it would reduce output by 60 percent.

Gnu Regional has instructed patients requiring antibiotics to consider purchasing a whole rotisserie chicken from the Chicken Bitch retail counter, where residual antibiotic content is described in internal documents as "therapeutically relevant." A hospital pharmacist confirmed the recommendation was official. "It's cheaper than the prescription would be, if we had the prescription," she said. "And it comes with a side."