Ractopamine is a drug used to rapidly grow muscle in cows, pigs and turkeys that also causes animals’ bodies to suffer tremors, lesions, and deterioration, elevates consumers’ heart rates, and harms the environment. Animals given beta-agonists such as ractopamine face increased likelihood of experiencing painful injury, inhumane treatment, and extreme stress.
Today, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Center for Biological
Diversity, Center for Food Safety, and Food Animal Concerns Trust
filed a lawsuit to require the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) provide 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 a drug used to rapidly grow muscle in cows,
pigs and turkeys that also causes animals’ bodies to suffer tremors,
lesions, and deterioration, elevates consumers’ heart rates, and
harms the environment.
Ractopamine is a nontherapeutic, beta-agonist drug created and
marketed by Elanco Animal Health to boost growth rates in farmed
animals. In the U.S., it is widely used in the industrial raising of
pigs, cows, and turkeys on factory farms. It is generally
administered during the animal’s final weeks of life. Animals given
beta-agonists such as ractopamine face increased likelihood of
experiencing painful injury, inhumane treatment, and extreme stress.
Evidence, including that within the FDA’s own files, also links
ractopamine to human heart and respiratory issues in meat consumers
and farm workers, increased risk of pathogen contagion, and
intensified environmental pollution through seepage and runoff to
ground and surface waters. Still, ractopamine usage has been
estimated in 60-80 percent of all pigs raised for food in the U.S.
“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 all together —
instead of allowing the industrial animal agriculture industry to
dictate what is safe.”
“We’re suing the FDA because the agency has dragged its feet for
years while factory farms have continued using this dangerous animal
drug,” says Hannah Connor, environmental health deputy director at
the Center for Biological Diversity. “Until the FDA can prove
ractopamine is completely safe, the best solution is to act urgently
to better protect human health, animals and the environment by
granting these petitions.”
Ractopamine is banned or restricted in meat production in at least
160 countries, including China and all countries in the European
Union. Nonetheless, the FDA has approved ractopamine for use in
cows, pigs and turkeys raised for meat in the U.S. and continues to
allow ractopamine residue levels in meat that exceed those adopted
by the international United Nations’ food standards body, the Codex
Alimentarius Commission.
The Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires federal agencies to
decide on all rulemaking petitions within a “reasonable” period of
time. The FDA has violated this mandate by failing to provide final
decisions on the 2012 and 2020 petitions.