Nutrition Science and Everyday Application - beta v 0.1

PROTEIN FOOD CHOICES AND SUSTAINABILITY 361
• Take antibiotics only when needed.
• Follow simple Food Safety Tips:
◦ COOK. Use a food thermometer to ensure that foods are cooked to a safe
internal temperature: 145°F for whole beef, pork, lamb, and veal (allowing
the meat to rest for 3 minutes before carving or consuming), 160°F for
ground meats, and 165°F for all poultry, including ground chicken and
turkey.
◦ CLEAN. Wash your hands after touching raw meat, poultry, and seafood.
Also wash your work surfaces, cutting boards, utensils, and grill before
and after cooking.
◦ CHILL. Keep your refrigerator below 40°F and refrigerate foods within 2
hours of cooking (1 hour during the summer heat).
◦ SEPARATE. Germs from raw meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs can spread
to produce and ready-to-eat foods unless you keep them separate. Use
different cutting boards to prepare raw meats and any food that will be
eaten without cooking.
• Wash your hands after contact with poop, animals, or animal environments.
• Report suspected outbreaks of illness from food to your local health department.
• Review CDC’s Traveler’s Health recommendations when preparing to travel to a
foreign country.
When you shop for meat, milk, and eggs, you’ll see lots of different types of labels making
claims about how the animals were raised. Does any of this matter when it comes to
antibiotic resistance? First, it’s important to note that no animal products—however they’re
labeled—should ever contain antibiotics, as required by federal law. If an animal is treated
with an antibiotic, it can’t be sold for slaughter or have its milk sold until the antibiotic is
cleared from its system. However, if animals were routinely treated with antibiotics earlier
in their lives, those practices could have contributed to the growing problem of antibiotic
resistance.
Choosing products that are certified organic ensures that antibiotics weren’t used in their
production, because organic farms are not allowed to use antibiotics even for sick animals. 7
(If an animal becomes sick and requires antibiotic treatment to get better, its milk, meat, or
eggs can no longer be sold as organic, but it can be sold to a conventional farm.)
You’ll also see labels stating “raised without antibiotics,” and buying these products helps
to support farmers and companies that have committed to reducing antibiotic use in their
production systems, even if they aren’t certified organic. However, antibiotic resistant bacteria
(bacteria that have evolved resistance to antibiotics so could cause hard-to-treat infections)
may still be present in products that are labeled certified organic or “raised without
antibiotics” (the bacteria could have spread to these animals from somewhere else), so
follow the food safety rules no matter where your meat comes from. 8