FACT Joins Lawsuit Against the FDA
For Failure to Respond to Petitions to Ban the Growth Promoter Ractopamine
By Steve Roach, Safe and Healthy Food Program Director
On March 26, 2024, FACT joined Animal Legal Defense Fund, Center for Biological Diversity, and Center for Food Safety in filing a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) failure to respond to petitions from 2012 and 2020 calling for the FDA to either withdraw approval of the feed additive ractopamine or to reduce the level of residues of the drug allowed in animal products.
Ractopamine is a drug given in the last weeks of an animal’s life to make them grow faster and put on additional weight. It can only be given for a fairly short period of time because it has negative effects on animal health. This is clearly reflected in the drug labels which warn of dangers to the animals. For example, the label for its use in pigs states:
“Ractopamine may increase the number of injured and/or fatigued pigs during marketing”.
The label for turkeys warns that “Feeding ractopamine to tom turkeys during periods of excessive heat can result in increased mortality”.
There is no such warning on the label for the use of the drug in cattle, but independent researchers found an increased rate of death in cattle administered ractopamine and another similar drug.
These are just some of the negative animal health impacts of the use of the drug. With climate change leading to even greater challenges with extreme heat, the health problems with ractopamine are likely to become worse over time. Last summer thousands of cattle died from heat stress in Kansas and ractopamine use might have contributed to those deaths. It is really hard to square the clear negative animal health impacts of this feed additive with the FDA’s obligation to only approve drugs found to be safe for animals. Accepting some negative side effects for a drug that is needed to treat an animal disease makes sense if the benefits outweigh the risks, but in this case,, the drug provides no health benefit to the animal. It just adds to the bottom line of the meat company.
When you add in the human and environmental health risks, the continued use of the feed additive does not make sense. There have been reports of health problems in workers exposed to the drug and there is clear evidence that residues of the drug in meat may put people suffering from heart disease at greater risk. With 40% of adults over the age of 40 suffering from heart disease this is a huge pool of people who might be harmed by ractopamine residues. The amount of ractopamine the FDA allows in meat is significantly higher (over three times higher in pork products) than that recommended by the international standard setting body Codex Alimentarius. Given the negative effects of the drug, it is not surprising it is banned in the European Union, China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia.
FACT joined this lawsuit because of the clear negative impacts of feeding this growth-promoting drug. We hope that it will lead the FDA to at the least give a closer look at this dangerous drug, and may even get them to consider banning it.