NSAC works with Keep Antibiotics Working who is leading a grassroots campaign to win legislation that will phase out the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics as feed additives for animals. The result is fewer effective antibiotics for medical doctors to use against human diseases. The use of these antibiotics and other antibiotics at subtheraputic levels in CAFOs contributes to the development of antibiotic resistance in disease-causing pathogens. Many of these antibiotics are the same antibiotics used to treat diseases in humans. This amount is estimated to be more than eight times the amount of drugs used to treat human illness. An estimated 70 percent of antibiotics and related drugs produced in this country are used in animal agriculture for nontherapeutic and subtherapeutic purposes. Many concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) operators give antibiotics to animals to make them grow faster and prevent diseases that are caused by the extreme crowding and other stresses on the animals. Sustainable Livestock: Working to support federal policies that encourage the integration of livestock into diverse cropping systems.Meat Label Standards: Ensuring that labeling standards are truthful, rigorous, valuable to farmers and consumers, and fair.Contract Agriculture: Ensuring contract fairness for crop, livestock, and poultry producers.Competitive Markets: Working to ensure that farmers and livestock producers continue to have adequate markets to sell their products in, and that consumers continue to have choice in the marketplace.CAFOs: Strengthening regulations and restrictions for CAFOs and encouraging sustainable animal production systems.Antibiotics: Working to phase out the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in animal feed.Learn More About NSAC’s work on animal agriculture! Antibiotic resistance developed in CAFO’s spreads to farmers and our sprawling highly centralized food system leading to threats to human health.įor the most recent news visit NSAC’s blog and browse the Sustainable Livestock and Competition & Antitrust categories. We also support the reduced use of antibiotics, the overuse of which impacts farmer and consumer health.

These include the ability to have confidence in the labels that are placed on meat products and the ability to continue to have choice in the marketplace, both in the number of purchasers for farmers to sell to and for consumer in the grocery meat isle. NSAC also works on livestock and poultry issues that impact the financial and physical health of farmers, rural communities, and consumers. This includes working to address the depressed prices paid to farmers and reduced choice experienced by consumers today caused by consolidation in the livestock industry. NSAC has dedicated years of work to advocating on behalf of farmers that raise poultry and livestock for large multinational corporations. Livestock and poultry producers receive a very small portion of the retail price of their products because just a handful of companies control the vast majority of the livestock production in the United States. While many of these programs help farmers implement better practices and systems that benefit the animals, farmers, and the environment, they cannot address the inequities in the conventional livestock and poultry systems that exist today. Farm Bill working-lands conservation programs.Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program.Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program.Value-Added Producer Grant Program (VAPG).Organic Agricultural Research and Extension Initiative.

National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA).

Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program.

NSAC will continue to advocate for increased discretionary funding and protection of mandatory farm bill funding for programs that particularly benefit sustainable livestock and poultry producers: These systems help reduce the need for antibiotics and are good for the animals, farmers, and the environment. These include rotational grazing and other systems that integrate crop and forage production with animal production on the same farm. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) has consistently worked to include provisions in the farm bill’s research and conservation titles (and in the rules and funding notices that follow) that support systems used by sustainable livestock, dairy, and poultry farmers. Agriculture production that is sustainable over the long-term relies on diverse crop rotations, increased use of perennial species, and the integration of livestock in pasture and range based systems.

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