USDA aims to tighten ‘humane,’ antibiotic-free meat labels

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday it would consider implementing higher standards for meats marketed in grocery stores as “humanely raised” or “antibiotic-free” – claims that critics say are often exaggerated to justify their higher prices.

The effort comes as USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service faces pressure to tighten oversight of marketing claims on packaged food. Consumers often pay a premium for “humanely raised” or “antibiotic-free” meat because they view it as healthier, better for the environment or kinder to animals.

But critics say the agency’s rules for allowing such claims on meat packaging are too lax, citing recent studies from animal welfare groups and science journals.

Earlier this year, a report from the Animal Welfare Institute found that, of nearly 100 animal-raising claims on meat products approved by the USDA, the agency was unable to show in nearly half that the producers submitted and signed the requested affidavit about animal welfare protocols. For 34 applications received, there were no documents on file to substantiate the claims or the substantiation was insufficient.

These findings follow a 2020 Office of Inspector General investigation that found that 15% of USDA-approved label applications reviewed were either incomplete or inaccurate, and a study last year in Science magazine that identified significant amounts of antibiotics in some of the beef cattle in a USDA-approved no-antibiotics labeling program.

The Animal Welfare Institute report prompted Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Cory Booker, D-N.J.; Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., to write a letter to Sandra Eskin, the USDA’s deputy undersecretary for food safety, saying that without accurate labels, consumers are robbed of their ability to purchase in accordance with their values, and that “the USDA has an obligation to ensure consumers have the information necessary to make informed choices about the products they purchase.”

“The widespread deceptive use of label claims such as ‘humanely raised’ and ‘raised without antibiotics’ is harming consumers and honest family farmers,” Booker told the Washington Post. “It is a positive development that USDA is now focusing on this issue, but the agency needs to quickly implement strong rules to clean up the marketplace.”

In an interview, Eskin said the USDA aims to reduce fraudulent claims about the treatment of meat animals. The USDA will also revise guidelines to recommend that companies provide stronger documentation to the agency about animal-raising claims and will strongly encourage use of third-party certification to verify these claims.

This is voluntary so it’s not clear how big an impact it will have immediately, said Brian Ronholm, director of food policy for Consumer Reports. He said verifying these kinds of claims is critical because of the significant potential for fraud in this area, but this “represents a good first step that hopefully leads to something more meaningful eventually.”

Eskin said FSIS, in partnership with USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, will also begin a sampling project to assess antibiotic residues in cattle destined for the “raised without antibiotics” market.

The results of this project will help the agency decide whether it should require that laboratory testing results be submitted for the “raised without antibiotics” claim or start a new verification sampling program.

“People should have confidence they are getting what they pay for,” she said. “This is a big deal because we haven’t done anything on this in a number of years and we are well aware of consumer concerns.”

Eskin said the USDA this year will start testing kidneys and livers at slaughter facilities for evidence of antibiotics.

“We’re going to see if we see the same problem” as the researchers in the Science magazine study, she said. If so, “we could have an ongoing verification program and ongoing monitoring.”

Animals raised for consumption are often given antibiotics to stave off sickness or to stimulate their swift growth. These antibiotics can sometimes later be detected in their meat, which federal regulators say is acceptable in very small amounts. Increasingly, however, consumers have been demanding meat from animals that have never been treated with antibiotics.

Lance Price, one of the authors of the Science report and founder of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, said it’s particularly important to us that the “raised without antibiotics” and related label claim was included in the list of claims under review by the USDA.

Price said that antibiotic resistance is a leading cause of death in the world and that we must reduce the use of antibiotics in all sectors to slow the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria.

“In food animal production, antibiotics are often used to compensate for overcrowding and dirty living conditions,” he said.

Sarah Little, vice president of communications for the North American Meat Institute, says it is too early to know whether these USDA changes will be onerous, or expensive, for ranchers and meat producers.

There is more that the USDA must do to strengthen the substantiation of animal-raising claims, said Dena Jones, farmed animal program director at the Animal Welfare Institute. For example, she said, in 2016, her organization petitioned the agency to clarify the “free range” claim.

“Earlier this year, we commented in support of another petition asking the FSIS to better differentiate between ‘free range’ and ‘pasture raised’ claims,” she said. “The FSIS should move quickly to respond to these petitions and resolve ongoing confusion and misuse of these claims.”