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CU brings Meat Without Drugs campaign to Davis Trader Joe’s

Thursday, March 21, 2013

 

 

Consumers Union Brings Meat Without Drugs Campaign to Davis Trader Joe’s 

Campaign Aims to Convince Trader Joe’s to Stop Selling Meat & Poultry Raised on Antibiotics

 

DAVIS, CA – Consumers Union, the policy and advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, brought it’s Meat Without Drugs campaign to Trader Joe’s in Davis today.  The campaign aims to convince Trader Joe’s to stop selling meat and poultry raised on a steady diet of antibiotics.

The Meat Without Drugs campaign is asking Trader Joe’s to help address a major public health crisis:  the declining effectiveness of antibiotics caused by their overuse in meat and poultry production.  The campaign is supported by more than a dozen consumer, health, environmental, and animal welfare organizations and over half a million consumers who have signed a petition calling on the national grocer to sell only meat and poultry raised without antibiotics.

“The routine feeding of antibiotics to healthy livestock is making these critical medications less effective for people,” said Michael McCauley, Media Director for Consumers Union’s west coast office.  “Grocery stores like Trader Joe’s can help stop this reckless practice by refusing to carry meat on drugs.”

Thursday’s event featured “Joe the Pig,” a costumed character wearing a Trader Joe’s-style Hawaiian shirt who carried a sign that squealed “Get Me Off Drugs!”  Joe is helping to get the word out on Twitter @getjoeoffdrugs

Some 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used on food animals, mostly to make them grow faster or to compensate for crowded and unsanitary conditions.  As a result of large scale use of antibiotics in livestock production, most of the bugs that are vulnerable to the antibiotics are eventually killed off, leaving behind superbugs that are immune to one or more of the drugs.  These superbugs spread on the farm and beyond, contributing to antibiotic resistance in hospitals and our communities.

Antibiotic-resistant superbugs from the farm are showing up on meat and poultry sold in grocery stores.  A Consumer Reports investigation released in November found that 69 percent of the pork chops and ground pork tested positive for Yersinia enterocolitica, bacteria that is estimated to cause foodborne illness in about 100,000 Americans each year.  Most of the bacteria found by Consumer Reports were resistant to at least one of the tested antibiotic drugs.

Similarly, Consumer Reports found in 2010 that two-thirds of the chicken samples it tested were contaminated with salmonella or campylobacter or both and that more than 60 percent of those organisms were antibiotic-resistant.

Consumers Union and a score of public health groups and other advocates have long urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to limit the use of antibiotics in food animal production.  After decades of inaction by the FDA, Consumers Union is working to convince grocery stores — starting with Trader Joe’s — to only sell meat raised without antibiotics.  Trader Joe’s has been unwilling to meet with Consumers Union to discuss the issue.

“We must stop the overuse of antibiotics on healthy livestock in order to ensure these medications keep working for sick people who need them,” said McCauley.  “Trader Joe’s likes to tout its commitment to its customers’ health and the environment.  Now it has the opportunity to help protect public health by selling only meat and poultry raised without antibiotics.”

While most grocery stores, including Trader Joe’s, carry some no-antibiotic meat and poultry, Whole Foods is the only store that sells these products exclusively, according to a Consumer Reports investigation.   The campaign is targeting Trader Joe’s because it already offers some chicken and beef raised without antibiotics, although no pork.  Eighty percent of its products are private label, which means it has direct control over its suppliers.  In recent years, the grocer has made a commitment to other sustainable purchasing practices, such as only carrying eggs from cage-free hens and sourcing its private label products with non-genetically modified ingredients.  Trader Joe’s recently announced that it will not sell genetically engineered fish.

 

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Contact:  Michael McCauley, mmccauley@consumer.org, 415-902-9537 (cell) or 415-431-6747, ext 126 (office)