We don’t want you to eat meat with antibiotics in it, you shouldn’t want to eat meat with antibiotics in it, and Robert Kenner, the director of the occasionally disturbing movie about the commercial food industry, Food, Inc., really does not want you to eat meat with antibiotics in it. Which is why he created this delightful crowd-sourced map that lets you enter your zip code to locate stores, farms, restaurants, and markets where you can get meat that won’t contribute to antibiotic-resistant superbugs that will kill us all.
In some communities, like, say, Woodstock, Vt., or maybe Nevada City, Calif., buying antibiotic-free meat is really easy. Your next-door neighbor probably raises it. In other places like, oh, almost everywhere else except for big cities, and not even all of them, finding a gentleman or gentlelady farmer or special organic store is a bit harder. This map aims to meet that challenge, and to bring awareness to a larger campaign — led by Kenner’s nonprofit FixFood — to reduce the use of antibiotics in factory-farmed cows.
In addition to finding you places to locate antibiotic-free food, FixFood is also working to get more stores on the map by petitioning Trader Joe’s to only sell antibiotic-free meat. This seems plausible, since the chain has already committed to selling only sustainably farmed seafood by the end of 2012. Perhaps Kenner would also consider trying to convince Trader Joe’s to put little dishes of those peanut-butter pretzels on every street corner?
