The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, and Food Animal Concerns Trust have filed a petition urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reconsider its recent denial of their request to reduce or eliminate allowable levels of ractopamine in farmed animals.
Ractopamine, a beta-agonist drug developed by Elanco Animal Health, is used to rapidly grow muscle in cows, pigs, and turkeys. Though it “increases production efficiency,” the drug has been linked to serious animal welfare concerns, including tremors, lesions, and stress-induced injuries, as well as risks to human health and the environment.
“The FDA — whose obligation is to protect public health — continues to cave in to the industrial animal agriculture industry on the use of ractopamine’s safety despite the agency’s long history of concerns about its risks,” said Daniel Waltz, managing attorney at ALDF. “The response from the FDA gives a pass to the myriad harms from ractopamine and abdicates its responsibility to ensure the safety of humans, animals and the environment.”
The drug is widely used in U.S. factory farms, typically during the final weeks before slaughter. Evidence, including from the FDA itself, links ractopamine to elevated heart and respiratory rates in consumers and farm workers, as well as environmental damage from runoff contaminating groundwater and surface waters.
“We’re calling on President Trump and Secretary Kennedy to Make America Healthy Again by taking this extraordinarily risky drug out of our food,” said Hannah Connor, environmental health deputy director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s outrageous that Democratic and Republican administrations alike have been too timid to take on powerful agribusiness interests to protect Americans’ health, but we hope this administration finds the courage to put a stop to this dangerous drug use.”
Despite international concern—168 countries, including China, Russia, and all EU nations, have banned or restricted ractopamine—the FDA continues to approve its use and permit residue levels in U.S. meat above those recommended by the U.N.’s Codex Alimentarius Commission.
“The evidence before FDA is clear: Ractopamine is not safe for our farmworkers and consumers. The time has come for Secretary Kennedy and President Trump to make good on their promise to Make America Healthy Again and ban this dangerous drug from our food system,” said Sylvia Wu, co-executive director at the Center for Food Safety.
The petition outlines several deficiencies in the FDA’s decision, including:
- Failure to address longstanding internal concerns about ractopamine’s cardiac effects, including the early termination of a small human study after adverse reactions.
- Lack of response to environmental risks, such as groundwater contamination and increased spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens.
- Acknowledgement that pigs given ractopamine suffer stress-related issues—including broken limbs, gait problems, and death—without concluding the drug is unsafe for animals.
Over 50 organizations, led by Friends of the Earth, have joined the call, sending a letter to FDA Commissioner Makary urging the agency to ban or limit the use of ractopamine in U.S. meat production.
