Inside D.C.

America’s Pig Farmers Get Fed up, Call Out Subway

Let’s hear it for “America’s Pig Farmers,” the collective signature on a full-page ad (page A5) of the October 29 Wall Street Journal, calling out loudly the “Subway Management Team and Franchisee Owners” for that company’s irresponsible announcement it will source all animal protein for its 27,000-plus U.S. restaurants from animals never given any antibiotics ever, and will do so by early 2016.

I applaud the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) and the National Pork Board (NPB), through the Pork Checkoff, for having the backbone, brains and the foresight to call out in the most public way a major corporation – and one that buys a lot of pork – for a really ignorant decision, one that will harm animals, farmers, the food system broadly, and specifically, the company’s bottom line.

NPPC and the NPB called on the company to meet with them to “consider a more balanced approach,” something smart company management should have done as a logical first step, if only it hadn’t worried more about camouflaging other company problems with warm, fuzzy, albeit pointless public policy statements.

The ad points out Subway’s announcement – made clumsily in two or three iterations last week – departs from what other food companies have announced, namely multi-year phase-outs of “medically important” antibiotics – those used in human medicine – for use in food animals, a move already underway by the industry broadly through a cooperative program with FDA.

“We believe a move to NO antibiotics of any kind – Subway’s position – could leave livestock without access to animal health medicines and could result in the unnecessary suffering and death of such animals,” the ad declares in bold face type.  The ad also connects the dots for consumers – “sick animals in the food system are not a good idea. Healthy animals help farmers produce safe food.”

“How will a hog farmer react to a fast-moving disease outbreak that could have been prevented with medicines administered in time?  The potential for thousands of animals to die or suffer is a real possibility. These are the consequences farmers will have to face,” the ad states.

NPPC was a little less sanguine in a statement it sent to meatingplace.com, a meat industry e-news service:  “America’s pork farmers support the responsible use of antibiotics, but Subway’s decision on antibiotics use in the production of pork, beef and poultry – and urging others to make the same decision – will leave farmers without any solutions to treat animals that are sick and suffering. That’s immoral and inhumane, and farmers aren’t willing to do that. Enough is enough.”

The very smart thing NPPC and NPB did was direct readers to www.porkcares.org, where they’ll learn not only the ins and outs of animal wellbeing in modern pork production, but the pork industry’s next giant step in antibiotic stewardship.  The NPB announced its independent, third party, blue ribbon panel of experts on swine health, food safety, antimicrobial use and food system quality control, including reps from Walmart and McDonald’s Corp., a former Centers for Disease Control (CDC) official, academic scientists and veterinary experts.  The panel is charged with reviewing the status of antibiotic use in the industry, and advising NPB on improving current practices and enhancing antibiotic stewardship.

We need more groups ready to very publicly call out the Chipotle’s, Paneras and Whole Foods of the world, those which imply greater safety in their products while, to my mind, they vie for market share by confusing and unsettling consumers.

More importantly, we need groups, individually or collectively, to take out full-page ads in the Wall Street Journal and USAToday praising those companies, such as Costco, who support farming and ranching because they support the professional use of technology in modern food production, refusing to be bullied or blackmailed by activists groups.

As America’s pig farmers say, “Enough is enough.”