New S.F. law on meat antibiotics
A new San Francisco city ordinance signed into law on Tuesday will require some grocery stores that do business in the city to report which antibiotics are used in the raw meat they sell.
The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously last week to adopt the ordinance, which Supervisor Jeff Sheehy introduced in September.
Sheehy says that he became interested in antibiotic resistance while at the UCSF AIDS Research Institute, where he worked for 17 years.
“HIV is just one part of a global health movement, and the recognition that infectious diseases know no boundaries,” Sheehy said. “Part of that is looking at threats that can impact us. One of the biggest is antibiotic-resistant bacteria. And that’s driven by overuse of antibiotics in animals, not just here but around the globe.”
When the National Resources Defense Council approached Sheehy with the idea for the legislation, he agreed to sponsor it.
Starting on April 22, grocery stores with 25 locations or more — the likes of Safeway, Target and Trader Joe’s rather than Bi-Rite or Salama Halal Meat — will have to file annual paperwork with the San Francisco Department of the Environment for each of its meat suppliers stating which antibiotics the producer uses on its animals, as well as the volume of antibiotics used. Stores that do not comply with the law can be fined up to $1,000 a day.
However, San Francisco consumers won’t begin seeing “antibiotics used” labels on packages of steak. Food labeling is under federal jurisdiction. Instead, they will have to check the website of the Department of the Environment, which will publish the retailer reports online.
San Francisco is the first county or municipality to pass legislation regulating antibiotic use in livestock in any way. The new ordinance will take effect just a few months after a landmark California law regulating antibiotic use in animals.
On Jan. 1, California will become the first state in the nation to monitor the use of antibiotics in animals and ban the use of antibiotics for nontherapeutic reasons (such as increasing weight gain) or disease prevention rather than treatment. Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB27 in October 2015, but it only applies to animals raised in California.
The city ordinance is more sweeping than the state law in that it applies to meat raised in any state or country. In addition, the data the city collects will be available to customers in other cities or states.
Representatives from the meat and grocery industries have already begun voicing their opposition.
“Today, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance that will require expensive, duplicative reporting and record-keeping requirements for certain food retail establishments in the city,” Jennifer Hatcher, the Food Marketing Institute’s chief public policy officer, said in a press release.
At this point, Sheehy does not expect any legal challenges to the law.
“I hope that they’ll see that this is a win-win,” he said. “And that if they all go into this together, it will make our environment safer and our food better.”
Less controversial, perhaps, is a second provision of the ordinance that requires San Francisco departments that buy raw meat to report on antibiotics as well. Within the next 90 days, San Francisco General Hospital, Laguna Honda, the county jail and other city agencies must list their meat suppliers, specify which meat they have purchased in the past year has been raised with antibiotics, and evaluate how much it would cost to switch to antibiotic-free meat.