Compass Group - Antibiotics

Food service giant helps keep antibiotics working by limiting their use in pork

You may never have heard of Compass Group, but many Americans have heard of the catering service Wolfgang Puck or know the name Motorola, at whose 39 corporate facilities Compass Group's Food Works provides food. Both are part of the global food service giant Compass, the twelfth largest employer in the world. With its huge reach -- from school and hospital cafeterias to restaurants and corporate catering -- chances are that you have eaten food prepared by Compass Group.

So it's big news -- and good news for your health -- when the North American division of Compass Group unveils a purchasing policy that will curb antibiotic use in hog and chicken production. The groundbreaking policy, developed in conjunction with Environmental Defense, marks the first of its kind for pork, and will be met by Compass' primary pork supplier and industry giant, Smithfield Foods.  (Read Compass's purchasing policy [PDF].)

Dangers of antibiotic resistance

The overuse of antibiotics in food animal production contributes to the rise of antibiotic resistance, which makes drugs lose their effectiveness in humans. For example, nearly all strains of Staphylococcus infections in the U.S. are now resistant to penicillin, and many don't respond to newer drugs. And some types of food poisoning are no longer treatable with the antibiotics once commonly prescribed. Beyond impacts in humans, farm-bred resistant bacteria can also contaminate air, water, soil and wildlife.

Project goals

• Retain efficacy of antibiotics for human health
• Establish guidelines for responsible antibiotics use in animal agriculture, especially in pork

Project Results

In response to the growing health threat of antibiotic resistance, Environmental Defense Fund developed county-by-county estimates of the quantities of antibiotics used as feed additives. We are also:

• working with companies to purchase meat produced without the use of antibiotics, and
• petitioning the Food and Drug Administration to ban the use of medically important antibiotics as feed additives for chickens, hogs and beef cattle.

Compass suppliers must limit antibiotic use

Companies that raise pigs and chickens for Compass must stop using medically important antibiotics to promote growth in healthy animals. The ban on this use of drugs applies to animals that suppliers directly control for the duration of the animal's lives.  This encompasses all of the chicken and a little over half the pork Compass buys (because its main supplier of pork, Smithfield Foods, raises just a little over half its hogs from birth).  Other suppliers will receive a purchasing preference if they can assure that their meat was raised without antibiotic growth promoters.  

Companies that supply meat pork and chicken to Compass will also be required to report on their total antibiotic use each year.  The Union of Concerned Scientist estimates that more than 70% of all antibiotics used in the U.S. are used as feed additives for healthy farm animals, but no one is really sure of the amount of antibiotics used in the pork industry because no numbers are publicly reported. As Compass' main pork supplier, Smithfield's agreement to publicly report its total usage of antibiotics per pound of pork produced represents an important first in the industry. 

Smithfield will track and report its antibiotic usage and continue to reduce its use of antibiotics over time - all without raising prices. Nor are Compass's costs, or prices, expected to increase as a result of this policy. Eliminating the use of expensive growth-promoting drugs should result in savings.

Extending work from chicken to pork

Like most hard-won achievements, this depended on teamwork, perseverance and a little luck.

The Compass agreement grew out of purchasing policies Environmental Defense had earlier forged with McDonald's and Bon Appetit (the latter owned by Compass) to reduce antibiotic usage in animal agriculture. Those two purchasing agreements, however, focused mainly on poultry.  As a next step, it seemed logical to focus on pork, which is generally regarded as the heaviest user of medically important antibiotics.

"But the pork industry is hard to change, because purchasers generally don't buy the whole pig," explained Millie Chu Baird, project manager for our corporate antibiotics work. "For example, if a company wants to buy bacon produced with fewer antibiotics, but others are willing to buy ham, loin and shoulder with no restrictions on drug use, the producer has little financial incentive to change the way it raises the pig."

Our staff felt we could overcome these challenges by aligning with the right purchaser and pork supplier.  Since Compass represents so many different food service businesses, its purchases span a range of pork products.  And as we began talking with Compass, we discovered that Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the United States and the main pork supplier for Compass, was already taking steps to curb its use of antibiotics.

Even better, we already had access to Smithfield through the work of our team in North Carolina.  In a deal the North Carolina office helped craft in 2000, Smithfield agreed to phase out the use of waste lagoons and spray fields on their farms. Our senior scientist Joe Rudek serves on the expert panel overseeing the development of alternative waste systems that will replace lagoons and sprayfields.  With that relationship already in place, the policy took shape and Smithfield agreed to supply pork that meets the Compass policy.

"We applaud Compass for adopting this policy and Smithfield for being the first maintstream producer to publicly commit to meeting it," said Gwen Ruta, Environmental Defense's director of corporate partnerships. "This unique collaboration demonstrates that it is both feasible and affordable to reduce the use of antibiotics today to help preserve their effectiveness tomorrow."

Work continues to keep "wonder drugs" effective

Since we first released our 2001 report When Wonder Drugs Don't Work, the chorus has grown louder, and the evidence more compelling, for curbing the overuse of antibiotics in agriculture. The American Medical Association, the World Health Organization and nearly 400 other groups have called for an end to the routine use of medically important antibiotics as feed additives for healthy livestock and poultry.

Environmental Defense is working on many fronts to curb antibiotic overuse in agriculture. One way we are meeting the challenge is through a market-based approach that engages companies to create change. "We know that companies can wield enormous influence in the marketplace," said Ruta. "Few have as much potential to bring about positive environmental change as America's corporate leaders."
 
Since 2003, when Environmental Defense helped persuade McDonald's to stop buying poultry that had been fed growth-promoting antibiotics, we have partnered with numerous groups to combat the problem of antibiotic resistance through market-based strategies.  In addition to McDonald's, Bon Appetit and now Compass, we've worked with Health Care without Harm (an international coalition that includes hospitals and other health care facilities), the American Public Health Association, and the American Nurses Association, to help them craft policies promoting the purchase of meats produced without use of antibiotic feed additives. 

Government's key role

Denmark has shown that banning the use of antibiotics to promote growth brings results. The country began the phase-out in 1999.  Since then, total antibiotic usage has decreased by more than 50% while the number of animals produced has held steady.  "The important finding in Denmark is that if you reduce antibiotic use, you reduce the levels of resistant bacteria in meat, on the farm and in animal waste.  That means that Denmark is reducing the flow of resistant bacteria into the food supply and the environment, thus reducing the likelihood of people coming into contact with resistant bugs," said Dr. Rebecca Goldburg, Environmental Defense expert on antibiotic resistance.

Our team is also working to get official policies in place to curb use of antibiotic feed additives.  In April, Environmental Defense, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics and other concerned groups, petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (see petition) to ban the use of medically important antibiotics as feed additives for chickens, hogs and beef cattle. The petition shows that those uses violate the safety criteria in the FDA's official guidance on agricultural antibiotics.

In addition, we are supporting a bipartisan bill (the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2005 [PDF]) in Congress that would empower the FDA to remove agricultural antibiotics much faster than it can now under existing law. (Because of cumbersome legal requirements, it can take up to 20 years for the FDA to withdraw a drug.) Sponsored by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R - ME), Susan Collins (R - ME) and Edward Kennedy (D - MA), the legislation would ban the use of more than a half dozen drugs commonly given to animals to promote growth and ward off disease.  The companion bill in the House is sponsored by Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

Whether through action by consumers, FDA or Congress, pressure to end the use of medically important antibiotics as feed additives will only continue to intensify as more people wake up to the growing health threat of antibiotic resistance.  "The New England Journal of Medicine recently published an editorial on antibiotic use in animal feed that basically says it's time to stop the practice," said Environmental Defense senior attorney Karen Florini, who chairs a coalition of health, environmental and other advocacy groups working to curtail antibiotic overuse in agriculture. "It's just about that simple"

Posted: 14-Sep-2009; Updated: 14-Sep-2009