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Surf-N-Turf, But The Sustainable Kind? The Limits And Potential Of Market-Driven Regulation In Food Production, Zdravka Tzankova

Zdravka Tzankova

This article examines the dynamics and likely effects of NGO efforts at private, market-driven regulation of antibiotics use in US agriculture. Such NGO efforts aim to eliminate the routine feeding of antibiotics to healthy animals for the purposes of prophylaxis and growth promotion. To that end, NGOs are pressing large food retailers, who are some of the most powerful market actors, to demand antibiotic- free meat and to refuse selling meat produced with sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics.

Curbing agricultural overuse of antibiotics is critically important for public health because overuse erodes the curative power of antibiotics by creating antibiotic resistant …