Why You Should Buy an Organic Turkey

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made reducing inappropriate antibiotic use a top priority. Doctors are worried, too. Ninety percent of physicians in a recent Consumer Reports poll said they are troubled by the meat industry’s use of antibiotics on healthy animals and its effect on human health.

Concern over drug resistance led several public health groups, including Health Care Without Harm and the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, to urge doctors and pharmacists to sign a pledge to purchase a Thanksgiving turkey “raised without the routine use of antibiotics.”

Hospitals are getting in on the action, too. Some 300 hospitals around the country, including the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center and Fletcher Allen Health Care in Vermont, have taken steps to to stop feeding meat raised with antibiotics to their patients and staff.

If you want to avoid a turkey raised with antibiotics, you need to read labels carefully. Here’s what to look for:

• USDA Organic/No Antibiotics. This is one of the best guarantees a bird didn’t receive antibiotics. (Note that under current rules poultry that is labeled USDA Organic may have been given antibiotic injections before it hatched and until its second day of life.)
• USDA Process Verified. When this label is accompanied by claims like “No Antibiotics Administered” and variations you can buy with confidence.
• Animal Welfare Approved. Poultry with this label has been raised under healthy conditions that don’t include administration of antibiotics. (Birds may only be given antibiotics if they are sick or injured. Non-therapeutic use of antibiotics isn’t allowed.)

Three labels to be leery of: “antibiotic free,” “no antibiotic residues,” and “no antibiotic growth promotants.” Those are all unapproved claims.