With battles still waging around the country about whether genetically modified foods should be labeled, and places like California, where the battle is being lost to big factory farm corporations that don’t want the public to know what they eating; there’s now a new helpful resource where people can take active initiative to find meats and other foods that aren’t filled with things like antibiotics, growth hormones, and genetic modifications.
Smith Meadows Farm selling pasture raised meats at The Dupont Circle FRESHFARM Market. Photograph courtesy of Real Time Farms.
FixFood has gotten together with Real Time Farms to create FixAntibiotics, an online interactive U.S. map platform that allows consumers to enter their zip code to find meats raised without antibiotics at farms, farmers markets, retailers, and eateries across the country.
FixFood has great videos, features, and news articles covering the full spectrum of issues related to the overuse of antibiotics in the meat industry, including discussions about superbugs becoming resistant to antibiotics because of overuse in corporate factory farms.
FixAntibiotics has a great featured video called “Meat Without Drugs” that talks about how 80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States go to factory farms primarily for animals to grow faster and endure crowded, unsanitary conditions.
The video also talks about how “this system is creating antibiotic resistant superbugs, making us all vulnerable to diseases they once cured,” and how “these superbugs are contaminating our soil, our water, and the very food we eat.”
FixFood also links to Congresswoman Louise Slaughter’s House of Representatives website, which campaigns against the excessive use of antibiotics in factory farm animals.
As part of her efforts, Slaughter has sponsored and reintroduced H.R. 965, The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act (PAMTA), to congress over the past few years and is now again stuck in committee.
Last year, Slaughter said on her congressional site that she “confirmed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration an alarming statistic: 80 percent of all antibacterial drugs used in the United States are used not on humans but on animals, many of whom are already healthy, while only 20 percent of antibiotic are used to address human health.”
“This is an increase from the previous estimates provided by the Union of Concerned Scientists, and for the first time the FDA has provided these data. We know that widespread use of antibiotics on healthy animals is contributing the growth of bacteria resistance to the drugs we use to treat humans,” added Slaughter.
The congresswoman also continued that, “This poses particular risk to seniors and children. These numbers make it clear that we need to take common senses steps to reduce the needless use of antibiotics in healthy animals and protect human beings.”
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