You’ve likely heard concerns about drug-resistant bacteria, but problems go beyond prescriptions for human patients. As it turns out, our takeout food may be a big part of the problem.
According to Shelby Luce, antibiotics program fellow for the MassPIRG Education Fund — an independent nonprofit group — approximately 70 percent of the medically important antibiotics (as defined by the World Health Organization) sold in the United States are for use on food animals.
The US PIRG Education Fund, along with the Consumers Union, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Food Animal Concerns Trust, the Friends of the Earth, and the Center for Food Safety, have released their third annual report card, Chain Reaction III, which grades 25 of the top restaurant chains on their antibiotics practices.
Panera and Chipotle were the only national chains to receive an A grade. Massachusetts-founded Dunkin’ Donuts received a D, up from an F last year, while KFC won “most improved,’’ going from an F to a B minus. The chicken chain made the jump this year after pledging to no longer purchase poultry raised with medically important antibiotics in US operations by the end of 2018.
A press event for the scorecard’s release was held at Tasty Burger recently to highlight the local chain as a regional industry leader. “People say it’s too hard to do this with beef and pork, but Tasty Burger is a burger joint, and they’ve done it [only purchase meat from farmers who raise animals without the routine use of antibiotics] since opening their doors,’’ says Luce, who notes that MassPIRG also “looked at Boloco and B. GOOD as local chains that have good antibiotics policies.’’
Even on well-run farms, animals get sick, and Luce clarifies that the group is not pushing for total eradication of antibiotics in agriculture, “A lot of times [antibiotics] are given to every animal on the farm to compensate for unsanitary conditions. What we are saying is, if the animal is sick, give them the antibiotics, that makes total sense, but these drugs were never meant to be used as a preventative medicine.’’
Luce says restaurant chains can take the following steps to improve their scores next year: regularly audit antibiotics-use practices against clear, publicly available antibiotics-use standards; conduct unscheduled, on-site audits of supplying farms at least annually; and require timely correction of any established policy violations.
Dr. Ashlee Earl, a scientist in the Bacterial Genomics Group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, spoke at the Tasty Burger event and reiterated the importance of limiting antibiotics in the food chain as part of a multi-pronged approach to combating what she called the “antibiotic resistance crisis.’’
Earl says that first and foremost, “We need everyone to treat these life-saving drugs as the precious resources they are: medicines for treating the sick. I cannot overstate how important it is that we stop using antibiotics in agriculture except when it is medically necessary.’’
The scorecard is available at the US PIRG Education Fund website, uspirg edfund.org/reports/usp/chain- reaction-iii.
Catherine Smart
Catherine Smart can be reached at thepocketgarden@gmail.com.
