Resisting antibiotics abuse
Better for animals, better for people
As a socially responsible company, we are committed to helping address the public health threat from antibiotic resistance. Since 2003, we’ve taken a stand against the animal agriculture industry’s routine use of antibiotics to promote faster-than-normal growth and to prevent disease in healthy animals. Our choices support more humane animal husbandry and mitigate potential health risks to our communities.
Our antibiotics standards:
- Our milk and yogurt come from cows who have not been treated with artificial Bovine Growth Hormone (rBST).
- Our companywide purchasing standard is to buy only meat, poultry, and seafood raised without the use of antimicrobials, except where necessary to treat sick animals in the documented presence of disease in the flock, herd, or fish population as verified by a veterinarian. (“Antimicrobials” is a more comprehensive term for the class of drugs that includes antibiotics.)
- We believe strongly that good farm-animal health should rely on healthy living conditions for the animals, not drugs.
- Our antibiotics policy has shifted over the years to reflect the changes that have happened in the regulatory space and the marketplace. We are committed to supporting farms whose practices eliminate the need for routine antimicrobials.
We’ve kept pace with industry changes in antibiotics use
In 2019, we updated our policy to represent best practices while taking into account the positive changes that have occurred in many areas of the marketplace. We also applied our policy to seafood for the first time.