But when those leaders meet at the U.N. on Thursday to adopt the Political Declaration on Antimicrobial Resistance, that concrete goal and others will be missing from the latest draft.

After months of negotiations and edits to the proposal, these ambitious—and likely effective—commitments have been replaced with a toothless target: to “strive to meaningfully reduce” antibiotic use in agriculture. Now, experts and advocates are concerned that this new, vague provision, among other weakened commitments, will be included in the final declaration.

“I think it’s a serious mistake,” said Andre Delattre, the senior vice president and COO for programs at the Public Interest Network, which has advocated for reducing antibiotic use on farms as a matter of public interest for years. “We’ve known for a very long time that the overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture is really problematic for public health. Saying we’re going to reduce without setting targets just shows we’re not as serious as we should be about the problem.”

The news comes at a pivotal moment. While the urgency of antibiotic resistance as a public health threat is well known, a new study released last week upped the ante. According to a systemic analysis of the problem, researchers predicted deaths directly caused by resistance will increase nearly 70 percent between 2022 and 2050, rising to around 2 million per year globally, with another 8 million deaths associated with the issue.

In the U.S., the largest volume of antibiotics are used in animal agriculture. Also, the preventive dosing of animals with medically important drugs—that is, drugs for treating humans—is still routine. This use of drugs can drive the development of resistant bacteria that then threaten human lives. Reducing or eliminating the use of medically important antibiotics in livestock would slow the development of resistant bacteria, experts say, safeguarding the efficacy of important drugs for longer.

U.S. officials were at least partially responsible for weakening the U.N. declaration’s commitments on animal agriculture. The advocacy organization U.S. Right to Know obtained a document showing that the U.S. was one of a few meat-producing countries that suggested deleting the 2030 goal. The organization also cites the fact that a Washington, D.C. trade group representing the animal drug industry objected to the goal. In response to questions about involvement in the U.N. declaration, a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) spokesperson referred Civil Eats to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA officials did not respond by press time.

Steve Roach, the Safe & Healthy Food Program Director at Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), has been tracking U.S. policy on antibiotic use in agriculture for years. He said that on the international stage, he’s seen the U.S. “actively undermining” stronger policies time and time again.

“The U.S. always seems to be aiming for something weaker,” he said. For example, he said the U.S. worked to keep targets for the reduction of antibiotic use out of international food safety standards. The U.S. was also one of five countries—all top users of antibiotics in animal agriculture— that did not sign onto an earlier global agreement, called the Muscat Ministerial Manifesto on AMR, that did include targeted reductions.

And Roach said that this approach on the global stage mirrors how federal agencies continue to approach the issue at home. “We’ve been calling for targets for years, and FDA is always saying, ‘We don’t have enough data to determine how much use is inappropriate. So, therefore, we don’t support targets,’” he said.

The FDA does track the volume of medically important antibiotics sold for use in animals, but it is still not tracking exactly how those drugs are being used on farms. Instead, it has funded small pilot projects and is now in the process of working with the meat industry on a voluntary reporting system.

The agency outlined some of those efforts in a letter sent to Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) last week. The letter was in response to concerns Booker raised in July about updates he felt would weaken guidance the FDA creates for the industry on responsible antibiotic use. Booker’s team was far from satisfied with the agency’s response and said that after more than a decade of attention, they found it incredibly troubling that basic issues of data collection and setting concrete targets were still unresolved.

“It is estimated that by 2050, as many as 10 million people globally will die annually from antibiotic-resistant infections unless the United States joins with other countries to quickly take aggressive action to address this issue. That is why I am deeply concerned that the FDA has caved under pressure from special interests for decades and failed to take any meaningful steps to address this overuse in industrial livestock production,” Booker said in an email to Civil Eats. “Not only has the FDA been unwilling to use its legal authority to reduce the massive overuse of antibiotics on factory farms in the U.S., but the agency is now actively working to block international commitments to address antimicrobial resistance.”

In 2016, the agency banned the use of medically important drugs on farms solely for the purpose of making animals get bigger, faster. That change led to a big drop in overall drug use. But pork producers and cattle feedlots still routinely add antibiotics to feed and water, often for long stretches, and drug use in those sectors has been rising over the past two years.

At the end of August, the USDA reported its recent testing even found antibiotic residue in about 20 percent of beef samples labeled “raised without antibiotics.” And over the past year, companies that once committed to moving their supply chains away from routine antibiotic use have been backtracking.

Multiple experts expressed dismay over what they said now feels like continued steps away from stronger regulations that can adequately protect public health.

“The U.S. government will do whatever it can to fight the serious public health threat of antimicrobial resistance—as long as that action has no impact on anyone whatsoever, as long as nobody has to make any changes to what they’re doing,” Roach said. “It’s really disappointing, because the U.S. could be a leader on this issue, and it just consistently chooses not to.”

In the absence of government leadership, Delattre said, watchdog groups will have to work harder.

“The commitment as it’s drafted now says it’s supposed to aim for meaningful reductions by every member country. Those numeric targets represented an idea of meaningful reduction,” he said. “Whether they’re in there or not, they’re the sort of thing we need to aim for, and it’s what we’ll be holding the U.S. farm animal industry to going forward.”

Read More:
What Happened to Antibiotic-Free Chicken?
Medically Important Antibiotics Are Still Being Used to Fatten Up Pigs
The FDA Is Still Not Tracking How Farms Use Antibiotics

Poultry Implosion. According to a lawsuit filed today, an ambitious plan to create a poultry company dedicated to slower-growing chickens involved rapid company growth that led to its downfall—and ultimately harmed farmers raising its birds. Although Cooks’ Venture set out to raise healthier birds under better farm conditions, it replicated the contract system used by bigger industry players like Tyson and Perdue, placing financial risk on the shoulders of producers.

In the legal complaint, farmers say the company’s leadership misled them by misrepresenting the financial health of the operation. As a result, many took on debt to house and care for the chickens in anticipation of a long-term payoff. When the company went out of business without notice, it left farmers in the lurch. The lawsuit also alleges the individuals in charge of the company conspired with the Arkansas Department of Agriculture to kill more than a million chickens after the company folded—so they wouldn’t have to process them or pay farmers for the flocks—and left farmers to clean up the mess.

The lawsuit will be one of the first brought under new rules finalized by the Biden administration intended to better enforce the Packers & Stockyards Act.

Read More:
The Race to Produce a Slower-Growing Chicken
The Continuing Woes of Contract Chicken Farmers

Food-and-Climate Funding.  As companies, advocates, and investors gather in New York City for Climate Week, multiple organizations are calling attention to the flow of capital toward food and agriculture systems that accelerate climate change—and how to redirect those funds.

Given meat’s outsized climate impacts, the global meat industry is at the top of the list. A group of 105 food and environmental organizations sent a letter to the world’s biggest private banks demanding they halt new funding for industrial livestock production and require meat and dairy clients to report emissions reduction targets. Meanwhile, Tilt Collective, a new nonprofit promoting a rapid shift toward plant-based diets, released a report highlighting investment opportunities. According to its analysis, investments in transitioning to a plant-based food system could reduce energy emissions far more than investments in renewable energy or electric vehicles, while also delivering other benefits, like reduced water use and biodiversity loss.

Nonprofits that work directly with the biggest food and agriculture companies are also in on the action. The Environmental Defense Fund released a report for investors on how they can play a role in reducing methane from livestock, while Ceres updated its investor-focused reporting on the 50 biggest food companies’ greenhouse gas emissions reporting and reductions. Their data showed that only 11 of the 50 companies reduced their overall greenhouse gas emissions compared to their base years, while 12 increased emissions. Lack of progress on emissions reductions was largely linked to the food companies’ supply chains. So while many companies did cut emissions from their own operations by shifting to renewable energy, for example, they struggled to reduce those that happened in farm fields and feedlots, which typically represent about 90 percent of a food company’s overall emissions.

Read More:
The IPCC’s Latest Climate Report Is a Final Alarm for Food Systems, Too
Methane From Agriculture Is a Big Problem. We Explain Why.

Fresh Cafeteria Fare. A lengthy progress report on California’s farm-to-school grant program—the largest in the nation—found the state’s efforts are paying off. More local food is getting into schools while supporting farmers. Between 2020 and 2022, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) distributed about $100 million to increase locally farmed food served in school cafeterias. The results of this program—which includes farm-fresh meals and nutrition education efforts—disproportionately benefitted students from lower-income families who were eligible for free or reduced-price meals. At the same time, the funding went primarily to small- and mid-size farms, more than half of which were owned by women; more than 40 percent were owned by producers of color.

Participating farms were also much more likely to be organic or transitioning to organic production compared to the state average. They were also likely to be implementing and/or expanding other environmentally friendly practices.

Still, despite California’s advantages over other states—namely a super-long growing season that overlaps with the school year and a plethora of farms selling fruit, vegetables, meat, and dairy—the total money spent by school grantees on local food represented just 1 percent of total food budgets. And schools cited many challenges common across the farm-to-school landscape: price constraints, processing capacity, and staffing. “The challenges around changing a complex school food system are substantial,” said Dr. Gail Feenstra, one of the researchers involved in the report, in a press release. “Fortunately, the state’s strategic and innovative investments in the entire farm to school supply chain—meaning funding for school districts, farmers, and also their regional partners, combined with support from CDFA’s regional staff—are beginning to address those long-standing challenges.”

Read More:
New School Meal Standards Could Put More Local Food on Students’ Lunch Trays
Farm-to-School Efforts Just Got a Big Influx of Cash. Will It Help More Schools Get on Board?
Pandemic Disruptions Created an Opportunity for Organic School Meals in California