A campaign has been put together by ShareAction calling on fast food chain McDonald’s to stop using antibiotics across its entire livestock supply chain.
ShareAction is a registered charity that aims to improve corporate behaviour on environmental, social and governance issues.
The latest campaign calls for action by asking people to email McDonald’s chief executive Steve Easterbrook to urge the company to stop what it calls “the excessive use” of antibiotics in its products.
ShareAction’s campaign claims that “McDonald’s is pumping antibiotics into the meats used to make its famous burgers...Investors have spoken out about these concerns. But McDonald’s isn’t listening.”
The website also says that: “The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that this practice could push us into a ‘post antibiotic era,’ in which the drugs we rely on for routine medical treatments no longer work.”
According to ShareAction, the routine use of antibiotics in farming is contributing to increasing antibiotic resistance in humans, and within the next 20 years routine operations will no longer be possible.
ShareAction has called to prohibit the use of antibiotics important to human medicine in the meat and dairy supply chain globally for purposes other than disease treatment or non-routine control of veterinarian-diagnosed illness.
McDonald’s US chicken supply is now raised without the use of medically important antibiotics.
A spokesperson has stated that the company aims to phase out use of the “highest priority critically important” antibiotics within European poultry supply chains by 2018.
However, the ShareAction campaign urges McDonald’s to make a “meaningful commitment to phase out the routine prophylactic use of medically important antibiotics across the whole of its global livestock supply chains.”
A statement on the McDonald’s UK website says: “For many years McDonald’s UK has been working with our suppliers to monitor and reduce the use of antibiotics in our supply chain. Like all UK retailers we also adhere to wider industry guidelines on antibiotic use in our supply chain in the interests of animal welfare and food quality.”
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
