Sustainable and safer beef: Shifting consumer demand Steps to Sustainable Livestock Bristol, England January 2016 Urvashi Rangan, Ph.D.
Consumer Reports research, testing, advocacy, magazine Mission: To work for a fair, just, and safe marketplace for all consumers and empower consumers to protect themselves. Founded in 1936 (80-years old!) Consumer Reports is a non-profit serving consumers through unbiased product testing and ratings, research, journalism (magazine), public education, and advocacy. We have about 8.5 million subscribers. Independent and accept no ads, free samples, or corporate contributions of any kind. Strict conflict of interest policies. Purchase our samples at retail with magazine subscription dollars (and some grants). We’re an organization of about 600 staff, including scientists, engineers, reporters, editors, fact checkers, lawyers, survey scientists and advocates
Food Safety & Sustainability Conduct a variety of food safety and sustainability tests (some very large) with a science and data driven approach. Combine with survey findings, label ratings, risk assessment, dataset analysis and topical policy issues Educate about acute and chronic safety risks and health of production systems (workers, animals, environment) Compare products, production systems and assess root causes of problems Push for marketplace change and shift consumer demand to sustainable choices
Ground beef test: Overview Purchased 300 samples raw, ground beef, 181 conventional samples, 119 more sustainable (all no abs +/- organic +/- grassfed) at retail, in 26 US States, over 3 weeks Segmented sampling across production types Measured prevalence of live salmonella, enterococcus, clostridium perfringens, e.coli, and staphylococcus aureus Measured antibiotic resistance rates to several classes of human antibiotics Full scientific report on conventional and sustainable production practices, comparative label ratings and full test results: articles/2015/October/Consumer%20Reports%20Food%20%26%20Sustainability%20Center%20Beef%20Re port_8-15.pdf articles/2015/October/Consumer%20Reports%20Food%20%26%20Sustainability%20Center%20Beef%20Re port_8-15.pdf
Ground Beef: Countries of Origin
Ground beef test sampling by production claims
Ground beef bacteria prevalence
Ground beef antibiotic resistance rates
Proportion of samples with multidrug resistant bacteria (>3 or more antibiotic classes)
Label Ratings & Criteria
Source: C ONSUMER R EPORTS ® N ATIONAL R ESEARCH C ENTER 2014
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