We need your help to fight the use of a controversial drug—ractopamine—on factory farms in your area!

Ractopamine is a feed additive banned or restricted in dozens of countries – including China, Russia, and all of the European Union – but not in the United States, where it is fed to cattle, pigs, and turkeys to boost growth rates. An estimated 60 - 80% of pork sold in U.S. supermarkets comes from pigs treated with the drug.

What’s wrong with ractopamine? Ractopamine is connected to “downed” animals, muscular tremors, and increased aggressiveness in animals. It was even found to increase incidence of cattle deaths in a 2014 peer-reviewed article¹. Aside from eating animals treated with ractopamine, you could be exposed to this dangerous drug through manure runoff into groundwater or well water. It’s known to be moderately toxic to plants and slightly toxic to aquatic invertebrates, so farm runoff is an environmental concern as well. Yet its effects on human and environmental health have not been well studied by the FDA, the agency responsible for ensuring the safety of animal drugs.

Moreover, we know ractopamine is being used where you live. FDA has reported adverse drug experience reports from animals fed ractopamine throughout counties of Iowa home to the threatened or endangered plant species: Mead’s milkweed, Northern wild monkshood, Prairie bush-clover, and Western prairie fringed Orchid; and home to threatened or endangered aquatic invertebrates such as: Higgins eye, Spectaclecase, and Sheepnose Mussel.

In response to these risks, Center for Food Safety sued FDA to challenge the agency’s approval of eighteen ractopamine-based animal drugs. 

We want to hear your concerns about the use of these animal drugs and their effect on the environment, animals, and human health.

Specifically, we are looking for members who meet one or more of the following criteria:

(1) You live or work near a factory farm, or in an area that may have possible exposure to ractopamine through manure runoff, groundwater, or well water.
(2) You regularly visit and observe areas of the natural environment—particularly to observe Mead’s milkweed, Northern wild monkshood, Prairie bush-clover, and Western prairie fringed Orchid, or aquatic invertebrates such as Higgins eye, Spectaclecase, and Sheepnose Mussel—that may be harmed by nearby factory farms that use ractopamine and other animal drugs. 
(3) You are concerned by antibiotic resistance caused by the use of antibiotics in animal production.

If you meet any of these criteria, please share your story with us. Please email alerts@centerforfoodsafety.org or call 415-826-2770 as soon as possible to help in this important lawsuit.

Thank you,

Center for Food Safety