The Animal Legal Defense Fund, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, and Food Animal Concerns Trust have initiated a lawsuit urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to address two rulemaking petitions concerning using the feed additive ractopamine in farm animals.
Together, the organizations are asking for a substantive response to their 2012 and 2020 rulemaking petitions, urging for the immediate reduction or elimination of the allowable levels of ractopamine in farmed animals.
Ractopamine is the active compound in several products administered in feed to pigs and other livestock. These products increase muscle growth rate and improve feed efficiency while reducing fat deposition.
According to FDA regulations, ractopamine is commonly used in commercial finishing operations in the U.S. This product is also used in the exhibition industry to enhance the muscling and appearance of show pigs.
When ractopamine is used according to label guidelines, the product exerts its positive actions but does not accumulate in muscle or liver tissues to levels greater than 50 ppb at slaughter.
China and EU require that pork meat be ractopamine-free. Though ractopamine is cleared rapidly from plasma and muscle, and is metabolically inactivated in the liver, it accumulates to much higher levels and persists longer in certain tissues, including liver, kidney, eye and hair.
U.S. consumers do not typically eat these tissues; some are consumed in other countries, including China.
Several U.S. packers have recently decided to process only pigs free of ractopamine to maintain access to international markets that ban even trace amounts of ractopamine in pork.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund argues against the use of administered beta-agonists, saying they cause increased incidences of injury and stress to the animals. The organizations stated that the FDA’s records indicate a connection between ractopamine and human heart and respiratory problems in meat consumers and farm workers. Additionally, they say there is an elevated risk of pathogen spread and increased environmental pollution due to seepage and runoff into the ground and surface waters.
“For years, the FDA has had evidence of the dire effects ractopamine has on animals physically and mentally but has refused to take action — risking the safety of public health and the environment,” says Animal Legal Defense Fund Managing Attorney Daniel Waltz. “The Animal Legal Defense Fund urges the FDA to reduce allowable ractopamine levels — or withdraw the drug’s approval altogether — instead of allowing the industrial animal agriculture industry to dictate what is safe.”