United Nations: Save millions of lives, reduce the overuse of antibiotics

In the wake of a new study showing that antibiotic resistant infections will kill 2 million people per year by 2050, a recent United Nations high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance adopted a call to action – aiming to meaningfully reduce the overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture by 2030.

The fastest way to reduce the overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture is to convince major meat purchasers, such as McDonald’s, to source only meat raised without routine use of antibiotics. Unfortunately, whereas McDonald’s pledged in 2018 to do so for its beef supply chain, it has not followed-through on that pledge. This latest UN call to action underscores the importance of McDonald’s, and other major meat buyers, acting quickly.

PIRG and other reform groups won commitments from major restaurants to eliminate the routine use of antibiotics in chicken, and as a result, 99% of the market does not abuse antibiotics. We must do the same for beef and pork in order to avoid a public health catastrophe.