Companies doing what the FDA won’t: Banning antibiotics for livestock

On Tuesday, the U.S. food service giant Bon Appétit Management Company announced that it will start sourcing only all-natural, antibiotic-free beef. Store representatives said the move was prompted by concerns that "the heavy use of [antibiotics] in agriculture has resulted in [the medicines'] declining effectiveness against common bacterial infections in humans." Bon Appétit operates 400 restaurants and cafes in 28 states and serves more than 6,000 hamburgers a month.

The company's decision comes at a critical time. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is poised to approve cefquinome for use in beef cattle. The drug belongs to one of the very last antibiotic families that remain effective against several serious human infections, and its widespread use in animal agriculture could seriously undermine public health.

The FDA’s decision is worrisome for another reason as well. The advisory committee that made this decision is not, surprisingly, made up of FDA officials. Instead, the consulting firm Sciences International of Alexandria (SI) runs The Center for Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR), an agency that is nominally part of the National Institutes of Health, but also a consultant to the tobacco and chemical industries. In effect, the makers of drugs and chemicals are also the ones who get to decide if they’re approved.

Ironically, in addition to Bon Appétit, other food companies, including meat-producing giants like Tyson Foods, Inc. and Smithfield Foods, are doing what the U.S. government’s own agencies won’t—banning the indiscriminate use of antibiotics. In 2002, Tyson Foods announced that it would no longer use Cipro-like antimicrobial drugs for poultry, three years before the FDA banned their use.

And in 2005, Compass Group North America, one of the largest food service groups in the United States, partnered with pork producer Smithfield Foods and the environmental group Environmental Defense to develop a first-of-its-kind purchasing policy to curb antibiotic use in pork production. The policy prohibits Compass's U.S. operations from buying pork from suppliers who use growth-promoting antibiotics that belong to classes of drugs important for human medicine. It also requires suppliers to report and reduce their antibiotic use.

While these corporations are taking big steps to curb antibiotic use, much more still needs to be done on the part of both producers and the government to ensure that our arsenal of antibiotics remain effective. In the meantime, consumers in the United States can find antibiotic-free meats using the Eat Well Guide, a resource directory of sellers of organic, free-range, and natural meat products.