Why KFC, McDonald's and Subway Need to Get Antibiotics Off the Menu

To mark World Consumer Rights Day 2016, Consumers International

(CI) Director General Amanda Long outlines why antibiotic resistance is such an important issue, the role global fast food chains have in tackling it and what CI Members are doing around the world to campaign for #AntibioticsOffTheMenu.


Every week brings a fresh story about the threat to human health from growing antibiotic resistance. The World Health Organization has warned that we face a post-antibiotic era, in which we no longer have effective treatment against bacterial infections. If urgent action is not taken to tackle antibiotic resistance we could face a future where common infections and minor injuries can kill again.

Antibiotic resistance is driven by overuse of existing medicines. With over half of the world's antibiotics being consumed by animals, antibiotics in farming is a major contributing factor. Despite this, the use of antibiotics in agriculture is predicted to grow by two thirds: from 63,200 tons in 2010 to 105,600 tons in 2030.

Tuesday 15th March is World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD). Consumers International and its Members are using this day of action in order to call on KFC, McDonald's and Subway to make global, time bound commitments to stop serving meat from animals routinely given antibiotics that are classed as important for human medicine by the World Health Organization.

McDonald's has made such a commitment on chicken in USA and Canada. The commitment does not extend to other types of meat however, nor to other countries outside of North America. Subway has committed to stop serving meat from any animal given antibiotics in the USA. KFC has made no meaningful commitments anywhere.

Of course we would like to see other restaurant chains, as well as meat suppliers and retailers, make global time bound commitments to stop selling meat from animals routinely given antibiotics important for human medicine. We are focusing on these three chains because they have over 100,000 restaurants between them. It is about more than simple buying power however, these are global household names with the ability to influence markets even where they have fewer outlets.

This World Consumer Rights day is about calling for major global brands to act responsibly. Antibiotic resistance is spreading in every region of the world. Left unchecked, antimicrobial resistance will kill 10 million a year by 2050. Given the scale of the global public health crisis the world is facing due to antibiotic resistance, making partial commitments is inadequate. KFC's efforts so far have been token and McDonald's and Subway must go much further.

As global brands KFC, McDonald's and Subway are in a strong position to set the standard for their industry globally and drive a decrease in agricultural use of antibiotics, faster than legislative change alone.

See what CI Members are doing to mark World Consumer Rights Day around the world on the WCRD 2016 Map.

View our #AntibioticsOffTheMenu campaign photos, taken by CI Members across the world outside their local fast food restaurants. 

CI strategy direction begins to bear fruit

As CI publishes its Annual Report Summary for 2012, outgoing Director General Helen McCallum reflects on another busy year.

Consumers International has achieved an amazing amount in the past year. Despite the uncertain economic climate, in 2012 we managed to ensure that the consumer voice was heard at some of the most high-level decision-making events.

Our annual report summary highlights some of these achievements, including our actions on World Consumer Rights Day; our role in the revision of the United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection; our involvement in the G20/OECD taskforce to create principles for financial consumer protection; our contribution to the development of WHO policy on non-communicable diseases; and our organisation of a first-of-its-kind international gathering looking at the challenges consumers will face in the new digital landscape.

Our new strategy of focusing on a small number of consumer issues for which there is something to be achieved at the international level is working. This is because we are concentrating on areas for which most of our Members have active work programmes and can therefore pool and share ideas: financial services, food, consumer protection, and digital rights.

Our Organisational Empowerment programme is developing services which can bring Members together – either in their own backyard or across the globe – to share information and resources, to learn from the experience of others and to offer or receive mentoring services from those who have more years of experience or have developed an idea which is now transferable somewhere else.

As always, we are seeking additional sources of funding – both to sustain CI itself and to support targeted activity within our four priority areas. Our new Strategic Plan (pdf) is making it easier for us to achieve this.

As always, none of this would be possible without the continued hard work of our membership. My time as Director General will come to an end in December 2013, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our supporters and partners for your spirit, dedication and commitment to the movement.

The way forward is now established and CI is in a great position to help realise the aim of supporting our Members by providing the benefits you need most and developing a powerful consumer movement equal to the challenges of the 21st Century.

CI’s new survey will help to advance consumer protection where it matters most

With the UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection (UNGCP) scheduled for revision in 2014, next year looks set to be a crucial one for the consumer movement, writes our Director General Helen McCallum.

A new project to map the state of consumer protection around the world will help CI and its members to spur decision-makers into action – both internationally and at the national level. 

The UN Guidelines were a key achievement for the global consumer movement when they were established in 1985. They have since become a key international reference point for consumer groups and governments around the world.

However, the world is a very different place today and modernising the UNGCP is vital if they are to remain relevant to consumers in the 21st Century. For quite some time, CI has been closely involved in these discussions with UNCTAD, the UN agency leading the revisions.

That’s why CI has launched a major new survey of its members in order to assess the level of protection currently afforded to consumers around the world.

We aim to build a comprehensive picture which will not only provide vital evidence to aid CI’s engagement with international institutions, but crucially will also support CI members directly in their efforts to strengthen consumer protection in their own countries.

Surveys are extremely useful for CI as they allow us to demonstrate that an issue is affecting consumers in
many countries and thus requires a global response.

We go to great lengths to ensure that they are also valuable to our members.

For example, CI members often tell us that being able to compare the situations between their country and regional neighbours has been an extremely effective strategy to employ when lobbying their governments.

The results of this survey will allow members to identify examples of good practice in consumer protection in similar countries and demonstrate to their governments what is possible in a comparable national context.

It might also help highlight any areas where progress has been made, granting consumer rights advocates the opportunity to congratulate their government and hopefully encourage them to do more. 

And, of course, the results will support members on World Consumer Rights Day 2013 as they draw attention to the most urgent consumer protection issues in their country as part of next year’s theme: “Consumer Justice Now!”

Why surveys create consumer rights successes

By taking part in global surveys, CI members are committing precious time and resources, something that we are acutely aware of.

These exercises are vital to our work, ensuring that CI’s policy and programmes truly reflect the priorities of our membership and the concerns of consumers everywhere.

Recent surveys have, for example, helped us to better understand the business models our members operate and to identify strategic areas to focus our efforts to build strong consumer organisations.

Perhaps most importantly, they have played a key role in many of our greatest recent successes.

To take just one recent example, information provided by members about the problems faced by consumers in financial services was instrumental in enabling CI to convince the G20 to take action on the issue.

As a direct result of this, international standards and guidelines are being developed that can be used to advance financial consumer protection at the national level - where it really matters.

Similarly, the reason it is so important to ensure that the UNGCP are fit for the modern age is that they will act as a highly effective instrument to encourage national governments to pass laws and implement policies that strengthen consumer protection.

CI’s members are its ‘eyes and ears on the ground’, and without their experience and insight we would simply not be able to fulfil our mission to champion consumer rights internationally.

I would like to thank our members in advance for their help. We really couldn’t do it without you!