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Tell Burger King "Our Way: Reduce Antibiotics!"
Burger King likes to say that customers can "have it their way," but none of the ways to order a Whopper includes the option of meat raised without unnecessary antibiotics even though overuse of antibiotics in agriculture contributes to the emerging public-health crisis of antibiotic resistance. Burger King rival McDonald's recently took the lead in the fast-food industry by announcing an initiative requiring some of its suppliers to phase out the use of antibiotics for growth promotion and instituting a monitoring system to ensure compliance. Send a letter to Burger King CEO Bradley Blum encouraging him to act in the interest of public health and meet or exceed McDonald's new standards.
| Sample Letter for Campaign |
Subject: Our Way: Reduce Antibiotics!
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
I am writing to urge Burger King to meet or exceed the standards set by industry leader McDonald's by adopting a company-wide plan to reduce and monitor the use of antibiotics by your meat suppliers.
As you know, on June 19, 2003, McDonald's announced an initiative to phase out the purchase of poultry products raised with antibiotics for growth promotion, encourage reduction in antibiotic use in pork and beef production, and institute a monitoring program to ensure suppliers' compliance.
Antibiotic resistance is a growing public health crisis. More than 70% of all antibiotics and related drugs produced in the United States are fed to farm animals for nontherapeutic purposes - namely to promote slightly faster growth and to prevent diseases that would otherwise result from stressful, crowded production conditions. The efficacy of these life-saving drugs for human use is being compromised in the name of making animals - and agribusiness profits - fatter faster.
As one of the nation's largest purchasers of meat, Burger King shares responsibility for the overuse of antibiotics in meat production and the related rise in the spread of antibiotic-resistant disease in humans. I urge you to require your meat suppliers to reduce antibiotic use for both growth promotion and routine disease prevention and to institute a monitoring system to ensure compliance by your suppliers.
I look forward to hearing an announcement from you on this crucial matter in the near future.
Sincerely,
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Campaign Launched:
July 15, 2003
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Antibiotic resistance in human disease is a growing public health crisis. One cause of resistance lies in the practice of adding antibiotics to the food of poultry and livestock that are not sick. More than 70% of the life-saving antibiotics and related drugs produced in this country are given to food animals to accelerate growth and prevent disease caused by overcrowded and unsanitary conditions on factory farms
Recent studies, including one in the New England Journal of Medicine, have confirmed the links between antibiotic overuse on the farm and drug-resistant bacteria commonly found in consumer meat products on the supermarket shelf. Citing these and other studies, the Journal's accompanying guest editorial called for a ban on the routine feeding of antibiotics to healthy farm animals.
How do fast-food restaurants such as Burger King factor into this problem? Burger King is the nation's 2nd largest fast-food company with 11,000 restaurants worldwide. As one of the leading purchasers of poultry, beef, and pork products, Burger King CEO Bradley Blum is in a unique position to influence meat-industry practices. Burger King can pressure producers to stop overusing drugs critical to human medicine by requiring suppliers to reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics and by monitoring suppliers through rigorous data collection and on-site inspections.
On June 19, 2003, McDonald's announced a new initiative requiring all its poultry suppliers to phase out the use of antibiotics for growth promotion, instituting a monitoring system to ensure suppliers' compliance, and encouraging reductions in antibiotic use in pork and beef production. This initiative is an industry first and represents a step in the right direction. McDonald's is the only fast-food company that has vowed to monitor antibiotic use by its suppliers, an important component to any serious plan to address this issue. However, the policy should go further by requiring reductions in antibiotic use by pork and beef suppliers as well and by expanding the scope of its policy to include other routine uses of antibiotics.
Now is the time to tell Burger King CEO Bradley Blum that it takes more than a 99-cent hamburger to keep up with McDonald's. Send Blum a letter urging him to announce a plan to meet or exceed the standards set by McDonald's.
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