McDonald’s commits to reduce antibiotic use in its beef supply chain
Why that’s good for public health
McDonald’s recently released a new commitment to restrict medically-important antibiotic use in its beef supply chain. The company will begin to monitor antibiotic use in its top ten beef sourcing markets (the United States, Australia, Germany, Brazil, Ireland, Canada, France, New Zealand, the U.K. and Poland) this month and set reduction targets for medically-important antibiotic use by the end of 2020. The policy includes restricting the routine use of antibiotics to prevent disease, a practice that the World Health Organization recommends ending because it breeds antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
McDonald’s decision is crucial, since overusing antibiotics to produce meat threatens public health. As the largest beef purchaser in the United States, McDonald’s new commitment could spark an industry-wide change to help keep antibiotics effective.
Why is McDonald’s commitment so pivotal?
McDonald’s is one of largest and most iconic distributors of beef to consumers around the world. McDonald’s serves…
- 68 million customers each day
- 75 hamburgers globally each second. That’s 86,400 burgers each day!
- 1 billion pounds of beef in a year in the U.S. alone
What do antibiotics have to do with it?
Antibiotic overuse in animals raised for food contributes to the rise and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And the beef industry purchased the most medically-important antibiotics — 43 percent — out of any meat sector in 2016. Farmers often give these antibiotics to healthy cattle to compensate for stressful, crowded, and unsanitary conditions.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 2 million Americans suffer from antibiotic-resistant infections and at least 23,000 die each year. A recent estimate suggests that assessment is too conservative, and that more than 150,000 Americans potentially died from drug-resistant infections in 2010 — more than six times the CDC’s statistic. “We always knew that the 2013 CDC estimates were incorrectly low”, says Dr. Brad Spellberg*, Chief Medical Officer of LAC+USC Medical Center. According to the World Health Organization, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are among the top threats to global public health.
What influenced the Golden Arches to take a stand on antibiotics?
McDonald’s action on antibiotics fits with the company’s commitment to use its size for good, though the burger chain needed some persuading. U.S. PIRG Education Fund and our Antibiotics Off the Menu Coalition first called on McDonald’s in 2015 to phase routine antibiotic use out of its meat supply chain. The company committed to transition away from purchasing chicken raised on medically-important antibiotics that year, and fulfilled that commitment one year ahead of schedule in 2016.
In 2017, we were encouraged when McDonald’s released a new Vision for Antimicrobial Stewardship. That vision included important objectives such as cutting routine antibiotic use from its entire meat supply. However, the company did not attach any timeline for making that vision a reality.
As the largest beef purchaser in the United States, reducing antibiotic use in McDonald’s beef supply could help set the new industry standard for responsible antibiotic use. So, over the past year, U.S. PIRG Education Fund and its partners brought together stakeholders including medical professionals, consumer advocates, and food industry leaders to demonstrate support for McDonald’s to make this move. We delivered hundreds of thousands of petition signatures from consumers all over the country to McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago during its annual shareholder meeting in May.
This fall, we held an event outside of McDonald’s headquarters to release the report Chain Reaction IV: Burger Edition, which grades major restaurants on antibiotic use policies in the beef supply chains and spotlights the lack of progress in the beef industry. Twenty-two out of America’s top 25 burger chains, including McDonald’s, received failing grades for lacking meaningful policies to reduce antibiotic use in their beef supply chains. The company responded in the media that it would release a global antibiotics policy for its beef by the end of the year.
McDonald’s most recent announcement raises the bar for responsible antibiotic use in meat production.
Who is next?
McDonald’s is now the largest food company to release a comprehensive policy to reduce medically-important antibiotic use in its beef supply chain. But we still have more work to do to preserve our life-saving medicines. Few restaurants come to mind that have nearly the same kind of iconic presence and buying power as McDonald’s. But Wendy’s is one. Last year, Wendy’s took a minor step in the right direction on antibiotics, but it’s far from a meaningful policy.
So what say you, Wendy’s? Will you follow McDonald’s lead? The race to the top is on.
*Opinions expressed by Dr. Brad Spellberg are his own and do not reflect the views of LAC+USC Medical Center.
