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T.G.I. Friday's Chain Restaurant Goes Antibiotic Free

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In early August the national chain restaurant T.G.I. Friday's announced it was going cold turkey. The Dallas based restaurant chain said its restaurants, which serve nearly a million burgers a month, would no longer serve beef from cows that had been treated with antibiotics.

T.G.I. Friday's now is serving Meyer Natural AngusTM beef burgers and may soon add Meyer Natural Angus steaks. Meyer is a Missoula, Montana-based beef company that raises Angus cattle without the use of antibiotics, hormones, or animal byproducts in their feed and under the American Humane Association's free farmed guidelines, an August 9, 2001 press release from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS http://www.ucsusa.org ) reported.

The restaurant chain's decision to discontinue feeding the public beef from cattle routinely given antibiotics supports a growing international concern. The American Medical Association adapted a resolution in June opposing the use in healthy animals of antibiotics that also are used to treat human disease. The American Public Health Association and World Health Organization have passed similar resolutions and the European Union has banned routine feeding of most antibiotics to healthy animals. The use of antibiotics mixed with feed is supposed to induce faster growth in beef cattle and hogs. Using antibiotics in this manner is called sub therapeutic. Therapeutic use of antibiotics, on the other hand, involves their use on animals that are sick.

A recent study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, estimated that annually 70 percent of antibiotics used in the U.S. are fed to healthy farm animals sub therapeutically. Recent scientific research has shown that extensive sub therapeutic use of antibiotics in agriculture is creating increased antibiotic resistance.

Earlier this year, a federal task force noted that antibiotic resistance is "a growing menace to all people," cautioning that continued spread of resistance means that treatments for common infections "will become increasingly limited and expensive -- and, in some cases, nonexistent.", the UCS press release said.

"We want to congratulate T.G.I. Friday's for taking this important step to protect public health. Other restaurant chains should follow T.G.I. Friday's lead," said David Wallinga, M.D., a physician with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. "More and more consumers are looking for meat raised without antibiotics, recognizing that this practice contributes to the spread of antibiotic resistance. With T.G.I. Friday's decision, they'll be able to find antibiotic-free meat more easily when dining out."

Wallinga's organization was one of a number of organizations that sent a congratulatory letter to T.G.I. Friday's when it announced it was coming clean. In addition to IATP and UCS, Physicians for Social Responsibility signed off on the letter congratulating T.G.I. Friday's.

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