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McDonalds Corporation has announced that its meat suppliers will be required to eliminate growth-promoting antibiotics in livestock and poultry feed. The company is doing so out of concern that subtherapeutic use of antibiotics in animals may cause human antibiotics to lose the power to fight disease or infection.

The McDonalds' order affects its direct suppliers who have contracts with the company and control production decisions. These direct suppliers, including Tyson Foods and Cargill, provide the majority of McDonalds' chicken products. McDonalds is also "encouraging" its indirect suppliers, mostly beef and pork producers, to follow the new requirements. The fast food giant said it would give preferential treatment to indirect suppliers who comply.

The action by McDonalds, which purchases 2.5 billion pounds of chicken, beef and poultry annually, is troublesome according to a livestock industry spokesperson.

"This is alarming, because the use of (subtherapeutic) antibiotics helps keep animals healthy, and healthy animals produce healthy products for humans," said David White of OFBF and executive director of the Ohio Livestock Coalition.

In a research paper published in The Journal of Food Protection, veterinarians from the University of Illinois wrote, "The role of food-producing animals in the origin and transmission of antimicrobial resistance has been overestimated and overemphasized." Separately, a speaker at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Dr. Ian Phillips, said, "In 50 years of antibiotic use in animals and man, the development of resistance in animals has not made a major impact on human and animal health, and such a development seems unlikely to happen now."

White thinks McDonalds took this action because, "They believe, in looking at their social responsibility, that they should undertake this mission." The company said it "joined forces" with Environmental Defense, an environmental advocacy group. Many of Environmental Defense's previous campaigns have been directly opposed to policies of the American Farm Bureau and other agriculture organizations.

White said he thinks another factor influenced McDonalds' decision is profit. "When you’re in the business that McDonalds is in, you have to be competitive. They basically have two responsibilities: one, to have people in their restaurants buying food, and two, to keep their shareholders happy. And if they didn’t believe that they would gain a marketing advantage, they wouldn’t do this."

White doesn't disagree that social responsibility is a legitimate reason for McDonalds to take this action. But he also believes the company should include other considerations. "There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of discussion as to whether this (antibiotic use) is acceptable, but when we let just social issues affect what we do on the farm, and we lose the scientific and economic focus, this could literally drive farmers out of business."

Like it or not, the farm community will have to accept McDonalds' plan. "What it implies is that we’re gong to have to make changes and we’re going to have to make them very quickly," White said. He added that some producers have already been moving down this path. "The use of subtherapeutic antibiotics has been reduced significantly in the past several years. We’re actually using less than ever before."