Smithfield Foods Inc., a major pork producer, announced Tuesday that it will limit the amount and kind of antibiotics it uses in pigs in compliance with new guidelines imposed by a major customer, Compass Group's Charlotte-based North American unit. Food-services giant Compass said it will buy pork and chicken only from suppliers that don't give animals growth-promoting antibiotics that come from classes of drugs also used in human medicine.
The agreement is part an accord among Smithfield, Compass Group and the advocacy group Environmental Defense, Smithfield, Va.-based Smithfield Foods said. Environmental Defense has claimed that using low levels of antibiotics for growth purposes creates bacteria that can resist certain diseases.
The agreement covers antibiotics that have been used to promote growth in hogs. Smithfield said in a 2004 Stewardship Report it would limit antibiotics levels in its pork to conform to a similar requirement by McDonald's Corp., Dennis Treacy, Smithfield's vice president for environment and government affairs, said in an interview. The policy also applies to the turkeys Smithfield raises in North Carolina, Treacy said.
The move comes on the heels of a Food and Drug Administration decision last week to ban the antibiotic Baytril in poultry production. Baytril already has been phased out by many big chicken producers, including Tyson Foods, and never was used by Perdue Farms, the companies say.
A range of other companies, including Whole Foods Market and Chipotle Mexican Grill, a burrito chain majority-owned by McDonald's Corp., advertises that the meat they sell is raised without antibiotics. The number of animals raised under the "Certified Humane Raised and Handled" program, which promises, among other things, that animals are raised with "a healthy diet without added antibiotics," rose to 2 million in 2004 from 143,000 animals the year before.
Antibiotics are used in livestock production in two ways. One is subtherapeutic antibiotics, which are given to farm animals throughout their lives, even when they aren't sick. These antibiotics prevent disease and promote growth. The other way the drugs are used is therapeutically, when animals get sick.
Meat and poultry labels that say "raised without the use of antibiotics" or "no antibiotics administered" assure buyers the animals didn't consume subtherapeutics or therapeutics. Producers that use these USDA-approved labels meet the strictest standards for nonuse of antibiotics. Among other claims approved by the USDA: Products labeled as "Certified Humane" indicate animals weren't given antibiotics subtherapeutically; they may have been treated therapeutically.
Not everybody agrees that banning antibiotics is the right thing to do. Denmark, the world's largest pork exporter, has banned the use of subtherapeutics. Since then, overall antibiotic use in animals has fallen by about half, but therapeutic antibiotics have increased 30 percent to 40 percent as a result, according to the Danish Institute for Food and Veterinary Research. Paul Sundberg, vice president of science and technology for the U.S. National Pork Board, says that shows that taking away subtherapeutics leads to sicker animals, which need to be treated with more therapeutics.Wall Street Journal
