The Center for Food Safety has joined Consumers Union and Fix Food for the launch of Meat Without Drugs, a campaign urging supermarkets to only sell meat raised without antibiotics. The campaigns first target is Trader Joes, one of the leading national supermarket chains best poised to make this commitment. Already known for its commitment to sustainable purchasing practices, Trader Joes is one of the national supermarket chains leading the way in offering meat raised without antibiotics. Urge Trader Joes to source only meat raised without antibiotics This is the first national consumer-facing marketplace campaign working with major retailers to reduce supermarket sales of meat produced with antibiotics. As part of the campaign launch, Consumer Reports has just released a new report titled Meat On Drugs: The Overuse of Antibiotics in Food Animals and What Supermarkets and Consumers Can Do to Stop It. Additional organizations supporting this campaign include Center for Science in the Public Interest, Environmental Working Group, Food & Water Watch, Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, MomsRising, Natural Resources Defense Council and STOP Foodborne Illness. The Antibiotic Resistance Problem The declining effectiveness of antibiotics has become a major national public health crisis. According to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 99,000 people died of hospital-acquired infections in 2002, the most recent year for which data are available. According to the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the vast majority of those infections were caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Superbugsbacteria resistant to one or more antibioticsare also showing up in food and causing illness such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and even death. Doctors and scientists have called for much more careful use of antibiotics so that disease-causing organisms dont become immune to them. The major user of antibiotics in the U.S. today is not the medical profession. Its the meat and poultry business. Some 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used not on people, but on animals. Antibiotics are given to food-producing animals for three reasons: 1. Make them grow faster 2. Prevent diseases in crowded, unsanitary and inhumane animal factories 3. Treat illnesses in individual sick animals To preserve medically important antibiotics for treatment of disease in people, currently accepted practices must be radically changed. What Congress Should Do: Pass PAMTA Several members of Congress are continuing to push for federal action. In 2007, Representative Louise Slaughter, a microbiologist by training, introduced the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA) into the House, a bill that would prohibit the use of medically important antibiotics in livestock production. Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced a similar bill last year in the Senate. As of mid-2012 neither had passed. What FDA Should Do: More Stringently and Immediately Restrict Uses Since the late 1960s the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been aware that antibiotic use in agriculture can create resistance in humans, yet it has failed to take any meaningful action. However, recent signals from the agency indicate that change may be possible. In 2010, the FDA said, In light of the risk that antimicrobial resistance poses to public health, FDA believes that the use of medically important antimicrobial drugs in food producing animals for production purposes - represents an injudicious use of these important drugs, and promised further action. However, by the spring of 2012 no more had been done than a general FDA call on drug companies to voluntarily stop selling antibiotics for growth-promotion purposes in animals. Whether companies will comply remains to be seen. FDA should immediately ban all use of medically important human antibiotics in food-producing animals for growth promotion or disease prevention. Therapeutic treatment of individual sick animals should only be allowed on a limited basis with veterinary prescriptions not regularly on a herd-wide or flock-wide basis to prevent sicknesses endemic to large-scale industrial animal production facilities. For more information and to watch the short video, please visit the campaign website at www.MeatWithoutDrugs.org.