To: Suzanne Greco, CEO of Subway

Tell Subway: Switch to better meat!

I am very concerned about the overuse of antibiotics in livestock production. The nation’s leading health experts agree that feeding low doses of antibiotics to animals that are not sick contributes to the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, one of our nation’s greatest public health threats.

As the largest restaurant chain in the world -- and one that markets itself as serving healthy meals -- I urge you to adopt a policy prohibiting the routine use of antibiotics for growth promotion and disease prevention in the production of meat and poultry served in your restaurants.

Subway can make a big difference by using its considerable purchasing power to work with meat and poultry suppliers to eliminate the routine use of antibiotics in their operations, or shift to suppliers that do not misuse antibiotics that are important in human medicine.

I also urge you to ask your suppliers to improve management practices and conditions for animals in their facilities, reducing the need for routine use of these drugs.

Sincerely,

Why is this important?

80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used in animal agriculture. As a result, those same antibiotics may not work when we get sick.

We cannot solve the growing problem of antibiotic resistance unless big meat purchasers like Subway stop serving meat raised with routine antibiotics.

By insisting on meat raised without routine antibiotics, we will remove a key tool that perpetuates terrible factory farming conditions and prevents a transition to more sustainable, humane meat production.