Consumers are getting impatient with restaurants and retailers for dragging their feet on ridding their meat of antibiotics used in humans. In the past four years, a steady stream of well-known restaurant and grocery chains have pledged to get antibiotics out of their meat.
Last month, a group of 30 consumer and environmental groups sent a letter to In-N-Out Burger, a California quick-serve burger chain, requesting that they stop serving beef raised with routine antibiotics. This comes after a similar letter sent last year prompted In-N-Out to state that they are “committed to beef that is not raised with antibiotics important to human medicine.” The chain further pledged to work with their suppliers to find new solutions. But a year later, consumers and environmentalists are still unsatisfied.
The reasoning is clear and urgent for those who believe in the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. “Some 700,000 people per year die of drug-resistant infections,” said Mary McKenna, author of the forthcoming book “Big Chicken; The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats,” and speaker at the recent Reducetarian Summit in New York City. MacKenna was at the event advocating that less meat consumption would decrease demand pressure and potentially decrease the “need for speed” in antibiotic use reduction.
Read the full story at www.AgFunderNews.com.
Emma Cosgrove 