Many US grocery stores now offer at least some meat or poultry that is raised without antibiotics, sometimes even at below-average prices for all meats of that type, but shoppers must become savvy about reading labelling to get products that live up to “no antibiotics administered”-type claims, according to new research by Consumer Reports, a research and testing organisation.
The declining effectiveness of antibiotics has become a national public-health crisis, leading doctors and scientists to call for much more careful use of antibiotics so that disease-causing organisms do not become immune to them. But since approximately 80 per cent of all antibiotics sold in the US are used by the meat and poultry industry to make animals grow faster or to prevent disease in crowded and unsanitary conditions, both supermarkets and consumers can have a major impact on this problem through their purchasing decisions.
To determine whether supermarkets are making products raised without antibiotics available to their customers and how consumers feel about them, the research organisation, contacted companies directly, and in March and April 2012 sent 36 "secret shoppers" into 136 grocery stores in 23 states. The shoppers reported back on more than 1,000 raw meat and poultry products that carried a claim about antibiotics or were labelled as organic. Just to be clear, shoppers’ findings represent a snapshot of offerings on the day they visited a particular store, and may not be indicative of products offered on other days or at other branches. Consumer Reports also conducted additional labelling research in 2011 and continued to analyse the claims in the market.
Consumer Reports found that 57 per cent of consumers indicated they had meat and poultry raised without antibiotics available at their local supermarkets. In that poll, 61 per cent of consumers also indicated they would pay 5 cents or more a pound extra; and 37 per cent indicated they would pay a dollar a pound or more extra for meat and poultry raised without antibiotics.
