Rich Investors Are Worried About Meat Raised With Antibiotics Too

The list of groups concerned with the use of antibiotics in agriculture is a long one. Animal welfare and environmental nonprofits, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and even President Obama have voiced concerns over the persistent use of antibiotics on farms that raise animals for meat.

Now we can add a new list of perhaps less recognizable but highly powerful names to the chorus. A group of British investors, such as Aviva Investors, Strathclyde Pension Fund, and Coller Capital, sent a letter to restaurant chains that included McDonald’s, Domino’s, and Burger King and a number of British restaurant companies expressing concern over the continued reliance on meat suppliers that give antibiotics to their livestock.

“Whilst we agree that antibiotics should be used for the treatment of sick animals, they should not be used to support irresponsible practices such as growth promotion or routine disease prevention of animals kept in closely confined and unsanitary conditions,” the letter said. The letter was sent last month, but The Guardian made it public on Sunday.

“These large food companies are key ingredients in the portfolios of most of our pensions and savings—thus it is a case of proper risk management to ask them to work out how they will meet this challenge,” Coller Capital’s Jeremy Coller, who instigated the letter, told The Guardian. All told, the investment companies that signed the letter control more than a $1 trillion in assets.

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“The world is changing, regulation on antibiotic use is set to tighten, and consumer preferences are shifting away from factory-farmed food,” Coller continued. “As stewards of these food companies and responsible investors, we want to protect both human health and shareholder value.”

British regulations for antibiotics are stricter than they are in the U.S.—the use of antibiotics for growth promotion, for example, has been banned since the 1970s. Still, the drugs are used as a prophylactic in confined animal-feeding operations, and 45 percent of all antibiotics used in the U.K. are consumed by livestock, compared with 80 percent in the U.S.

Last year, a review on antibiotic resistance, financed by the British government, found that 72 percent of 139 research papers on the topic discovered a link between drug use in livestock and resistant infections in humans. Just 5 percent of the papers found no link. Across the EU, 25,000 people die annually from antibiotic-resistant infections.

McDonald’s U.K. announced that it would phase out antibiotics from its poultry supply last March and further details it on its website. “For many years McDonald’s U.K. has been working with our suppliers to monitor and reduce the use of antibiotics in our supply chain,” it read. “Like all U.K. retailers, we also adhere to wider industry guidelines on antibiotic use in our supply chain in the interests of animal welfare and food quality.”

The letter warned that “negative media coverage and civil society campaigning can harm sales and affect consumer loyalty, a matter of particular concern for fast-food chains whose customers can easily shift their spending habits.”

But leave it to even the public health–minded investors to point out the economic silver living. The letter continued: “There will be cost savings and reduced disruption for forward-looking companies who have established relationships with higher welfare producers.”