{"id":5113,"date":"2024-08-29T11:48:45","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T15:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/?p=5113"},"modified":"2024-09-24T20:04:24","modified_gmt":"2024-09-25T00:04:24","slug":"usda-conspiring-with-meat-companies-to-humanewash-with-false-antibiotic-free-labels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/news\/usda-conspiring-with-meat-companies-to-humanewash-with-false-antibiotic-free-labels\/","title":{"rendered":"Farm Forward Calls out the USDA Conspiring with Meat Companies to Humanewash with False \u201cAntibiotic-Free\u201d Labels"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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A USDA testing program finds that at least 20 percent of tested cattle samples labeled \u201craised without antibiotics\u201d or \u201cno antibiotics ever\u201d tested positive for antibiotics. USDA buries findings and reports no punitive action.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last year, the United States Department of Agriculture launched a sampling project<\/a>, to test food products labeled with USDA-approved voluntary marketing claims like \u201craised without antibiotics,\u201d \u201cno antibiotics ever.\u201d The results are in, and the USDA has found antibiotics in at least 20 percent of cattle tested for drugs. Unfortunately, even after confirming that many cattle products are fraudulently labeled antibiotic-free, the USDA will not require meat companies to test and prove the accuracy of their claims. The USDA\u2019s negligence allows large meat companies to profit off of consumers who pay a premium for a product they believe is healthier and more humane, all based on a lie. The USDA\u2019s inaction will hurt farmers and ranchers who raise animals in more humane ways, without the routine use of antibiotics, and who can\u2019t compete against meat companies who cheat.<\/p>\n

While the USDA\u2019s disappointing announcement is consistent with its long history of prioritizing big ag over the public, allowing this level of deception to persist in beef without even requiring testing surprised even us. Anything short of requiring testing is good for companies that are cheating and provides yet another example of the USDA\u2019s toothless responses to factory farms\u2019 failures to adhere to common sense standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cIncreasingly, consumers are looking for products that align with their values, but it\u2019s clear the meat industry is unable or unwilling to meet consumer expectations. Meat companies want to skate by on flimsy marketing claims like \u2018sustainable,\u2019 \u2018humane,\u2019 and \u2018antibiotic free,\u2019 without actually doing the work to ensure a product that meets those standards,\u201d said Farm Forward Executive Director Andrew deCoriolis<\/strong>. \u201cHumanewashing this flagrant usually is the domain of industry, but here the USDA is trying to sell us news that the US beef supply is compromised \u2014 and a meaningful percentage actually contaminated \u2014 as good news, and even evidence of their trustworthiness. Meanwhile, the USDA won\u2019t even disclose which companies\u2019 products tested positive for antibiotics in their study, so the public remains in the dark and doesn\u2019t know who to trust. With no regulatory action in place to stop this harmful trend, the USDA has basically greenlit meat companies deceptively marketing products and continuing to lie to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies advertising RWA or antibiotic-free labels should implement transparent testing procedures with data made easily accessible to consumers. And the USDA must provide regulations for all findings. The government can\u2019t pass that task off to the private sector because these findings reiterate that industries won\u2019t voluntarily check themselves. It\u2019s up to the USDA to decide that meat companies can\u2019t jeopardize public health to turn a profit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Aaron Gross, founder of Farm Forward <\/strong>and Director of the University of San Diego Center for Food Systems Transformation<\/strong>, added, \u201cRemembering that the USDA has an impossible dual mandate \u2014 to both protect consumers and promote Big Ag \u2014 helps explain its cowed response to massive deception in the beef industry. The USDA\u2019s data suggests the need for transformation, but instead the agency is helping meat companies continue to deceive the public. Encouraging only voluntary testing amounts to a signal that deceptive labeling is an acceptable business strategy. The USDA\u2019s response is pretending that this highly profitable mislabeling is happening by accident. The pattern suggests the mislabeling is by design.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A USDA testing program finds that at least 20 percent of tested cattle samples labeled \u201craised without antibiotics\u201d or \u201cno antibiotics ever\u201d tested positive for antibiotics. USDA buries findings and reports no punitive action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":3001,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,21,24,27,28,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animal-welfare","category-antibiotics","category-food-policy","category-humanewashing","category-legislation","category-public-health-pandemics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}