Animal Protection

Modern agriculture has changed rapidly over the past few years providing the American consumer with a safe, healthy, inexpensive, and bountiful choice of food. With these changes have come serious concerns from the agriculture and public health community about the sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics for growth promotion and disease prevention in farm animals. The concern is that antibiotic misuse in agriculture, as well as in human medicine, can increase the incidence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infection in people.

The “Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2005”, has been introduced in the House of Representatives (HR 2562) and the US Senate (S 742). These bills propose to phase out the use of specific antibiotics; penicillin, tetracycline, macrolide, lincosamide, streptogramin, aminoglycoside, sulfonamide, or any other drug or derivative of a drug that is used in humans or intended for use in humans to treat or prevent disease or infection. The objective of the legislation is to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics important to human medicine by restricting their use as additives in animal feed.

The American Humane Association has been on the cutting edge of this issue, having created in 1999 the American Humane® Certified program (originally known as the Free Farmed program) to promote humane standards of care for animals used in food production. The standards created by American Humane do not allow the sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics or growth hormones.

The American Humane Association believes that if an animal is sick, it is more humane to treat them than to let them suffer. If an American Humane Certified animal gets sick, the caretaker is allowed to treat the animal to make them well. This animal is then taken out of the American Humane Certified food chain. The product from this animal is not labeled with the American Humane Certified logo.

American Humane's Policy Statement on Farm Animal Welfare