Even the President takes a stand against antibiotics in meat.
In a recent report by the Huffington post this past summer, President Obama had announced that many federal cafeteria will be buying meat and poultry with fewer antibiotics later this year. This is in cordination with a White House summit in part to discuss the responsible use of antibiotics. The Obama Administration has been announcing plans since earlier this year to fight the use of antibiotics in meat and the threat posed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The same article was also published by the New York Times, in which Dr. John P. Holdren, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, announced the sweeping changes witin government cafeterias, "Today's commitments demonstrate the power of voluntary action to effect sweeping change."
As mentioned in our campaign, the use of antibiotics is not necessarily a bad thing, so long as their is not an overexposure to them. I have discovered that meat with more antibiotics in them usually derives from the qualities of the farm in which the animal was raised.
What is more important is that the President himself, the leader of the free world, is getting on board with the program of trying to find better solutions for your quality of meat products. Our campaign proposes finding better solutions for what you ingest as you purchase your goods from a restaurant or a local grocer store.
The Huffington Post article also discusses a major finding from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which "estimates that drug-resistant bacteria cause 23,000 deaths and 2 million illnesses each year in the United States." Which is an understanding of aybe why the millenial generation has become so aware of how they are eating today. The article also mentions about how repeated exposure to antibiotics can lead germs to become resistant to the drugs, which makes the become very ineffective.
The White House Forum will host more than 150 food retailers, along with other representatives such as hospitals and drug companies. These entities are going to show off what they will commit to as far as preventing antibiotic bacteria from happening.
The New York Times article also talks about major corporations promising to reduce the use of antibiotics in their meats or curbing them altogether. Corporations like Tyson foods, Foster Farms, and Perdue announced plans in correlation to to reduce the use of antibiotics. The article mentions also how customers of well known fast food chains like McDonald's and Chick-Fil-A have called upon them to stop using antibiotics in their meat. Chick-Fil-A is one of the corporations mentioned in my previous article who have announced their intentions to sell antibiotic-free meat to customers by the end of 2016. What was the most surprising discovery was that Walmart, a corporation well known by controversy for how tey treat their employees and whatnot, made a promise to require its meat suppliers to follow the guidelines set by the American Veterinary Medical Association. An executive from Walmart said that the company was asking suppliers to report publicly the amount of antibiotic use in the meat annually.
This same article also mentioned that the Food and Drug Administration announced that is has made a rule about how veterinarians can provide antibiotics to the animals in their care.The rule requires farmers to get a prescription from veterinarians to give antibiotics to the animals within their care and instructs veterinarians to follow state guidelines. It used to be that farmers were allowed to just buy the antibiotics with little or no guidelines. These are along the rules that Walmart has asked its meat suppliers to follow, as mentioned in the previous paragraph.
As mentioned before, the fact that the President himself is making this an issue to take action against is showing that the times are changing in the quality of food that we are consuming, Allan Coukell, who is the senior director for health programs and the Pew Charitable Trust, highlighted this very clearly, "There is no single even that turns the tide, but cumulatively I don't think anyone has ever put this kind of focus on antibiotic resistance before." Food and politics may not mix together too well, however, it is always responsible to be involved with what you are consuming. I posted an article a few weeks ago about how restaurants are now being given blind tests for their use of antibiotics in meat. 25 restaurants were tested and 20 of them received Fs on their "Evaluation report card." With signs like these coming about, we can definitely expect more and more involvement in the food industry that can correlate to the quality of our health by eating what is supposed to be 'good for us.' For people interested in this campaign as much as we are, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said 6 words that pretty much sums up how we should all feel about this, "This is music to our ears."
