By Lucia Sayre and Jack Henderson 

California’s Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 27 (SB27) into state law over the weekend, prohibiting the routine use of medically important antibiotics in animal agriculture. California is the first state in the nation to do so, and it is a big step in the right direction against the serious public health threat of antibiotic resistance. 

The overuse of these drugs to promote growth and prevent disease in animal agriculture is a major contributor to 23,000 deaths and millions of illnesses per year caused by drug-resistant bacteria, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s hard to imagine a world where a scraped knee or minor surgery becomes a life-threatening event, but it’s a reality for a growing number of people in the United States and around the world. 

Why use these precious drugs in animal agriculture in the first place? The answer is simple – the overuse of antibiotics is a symptom of a food production system gone awry. Conventional, industrialized meat production environments are generally overcrowded and many are unhealthy for the animals. Producers deliver low-level doses of antibiotics routinely to animals to both promote rapid growth and help prevent disease until slaughter. 

“Restricting antibiotic use in confined animal feeding operations will not only help reduce the risk of generating antibiotic-resistant bacteria, it is also an important element of a more comprehensive package of reforms that are necessary to make animal agriculture more sustainable and reduce impacts on public and environmental health,” said Ted Schettler, the Science Director at the Science and Environmental Health Network.

As this law goes into effect in California in 2018, and meat producers are changing their production practices to be in compliance with SB27, increased marketplace demand for more sustainably-produced meat products becomes an important factor, and that’s where hospitals, schools, universities and other institutions have a critical role to play with their purchasing decisions. The buying power of these community institutions is significant and carries with it the moral authority of our collective community voice, a commitment to healthier food production and healthier food for our students, patients, staff, laborers, teachers, and health care professionals.

In California, the work of aggregating institutional volume demand for healthier meat products began some years ago with the Bay Area Hospital Leadership Team, a group of food service directors, chefs and nutrition professionals from 15 hospitals and health systems concerned about the prevalence of non-therapeutic antibiotics in animal husbandry and the resulting negative effects on human health. 

In the spring of 2013, there was a seismic shift when, with organizing support from HCWH, the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Academic Senate issued a resolution calling for the elimination of meat raised with the routine, non-therapeutic use of antibiotics within the UCSF Campus and Medical Center food services. This was followed in October of that year with a transformational Balanced Menus Summit, a true meeting of the minds that drew together representatives from throughout the meat industry – including ranchers, producers, processors, and distributors – to strategize with institutional buyers in healthcare. 

As a result of that Summit, UCSF Medical Center was joined by other California hospitals and UCLA Medical Center in switching to meat and poultry produced without the routine use of antibiotics. To date, there are more than 60 hospitals across the state engaged in sustainable meat procurement. And this work is not exclusive to the health care sector. Increased sustainable meat procurement is happening in schools, universities and municipalities across the state. 

This year, HCWH is partnering with School Food FOCUS to develop the California Ed-Med Collaboration, a cross-sector social change network to support significant shifts towards healthier meat procurement with aggregated volume demand and to coordinate a powerful advocacy voice to ensure that our food system is protective of our collective public and environmental health. 

It is the combination of powerful legislation, like SB27, and shifting market demand toward healthier, sustainably-grown foods that can address serious health issues like antibiotic resistance and build a healthier food system for the future. We applaud Senator Jerry Hill and Governor Jerry Brown for pushing SB27 into state law in California, and we hope that this legislation will serve as a model for other states to follow suit. In addition, HCWH will continue to work with our partners to bring a coordinated, institutional demand for healthy food to the table.

Lucia Sayre is the CA Regional Director for the Healthy Food in Health Care program, a national program of Health Care Without Harm.

After more than 25 years in food service, Jack Henderson retired from his position as the Associate Food Services Director for University of California, San Francisco Medical Center. Jack continues to work with Health Care Without Harm as a consultant.