The results show that traditional farmers could sell this kind of milk to a large market if they could find the right price, and that dairy consumers can help slow the rise of antimicrobial resistance.
“Most antibiotics made around the world are used to raise animals for food. Dr. Renata Ivanek, a professor in the Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences, said, “To deal with antibiotic resistance on a global scale, we need to cut down on the use of antibiotics in animals, including dairy cattle.” She is the study’s main author. The study came out in the Journal of Dairy Science on November 4.
In the paper, the researchers suggest putting a new label on milk that says “Responsible Antibiotic Use” (RAU). This label would use consumer preferences to reduce the use of antibiotics on commercial dairy farms. The study showed that consumers were willing to pay about the same amount for RAU-labeled milk as for unlabeled milk, but they much preferred the RAU-labeled milk over the unlabeled milk. So, the researchers think that this new RAU label would encourage farmers to use less antibiotics than they do with regular milk that doesn’t have a label.
Researchers say that when cows are given too many antibiotics, resistant strains of bacteria grow. This can make antibiotics less effective for both animals and people. Dr. Ece Bulut, a research associate in the Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences and co-author of the study, said, “Consumers should know that their choices matter and that their knowledge of antibiotic use could help the dairy industry move toward more sustainable ways of making milk.”
The researchers surveyed U.S. adults from all over the country and found that half of them were willing to buy milk with the RAU label. They also tried a random auction with real money and milk. This showed that buyers were also willing to pay for RAU-labeled milk, but only a little more than they were willing to pay for unlabeled cartons.
“This means that there could be a big market for RAU milk as long as it doesn’t cost much more than regular milk,” said Robert Schell, M.S. ’19, the first author of the study. “It could be a new option for regular farmers.”
Bulut said that the poultry industry already uses a label similar to CRAU, which stands for “certified responsible antibiotic use.” CRAU limits the use of antibiotics that are important for medicine, which means antibiotics that are used to treat people. The researchers think that the RAU label should also be decided by veterinarians and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) standards, so that any carton of milk with a RAU label would come from a cow that was only given antibiotics when it was medically necessary.
“The existing literature suggests that larger bodies that regulate these kinds of claims, like the USDA and CRAU certification, make consumers more willing to trust and, as a result, buy products with desirable labels,” said Schell, a doctoral student at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, who started working on the study as a master’s degree student at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management.
The researchers said that this study is an important first step in finding out how people feel about a RAU label and what kind of market it could be for conventional farmers.
The work was done with help from the Department of Communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and the College of Veterinary Medicine. The researchers also worked with Cornell’s Survey Research Institute and Lab for Experimental Economics and Decision Research.
The National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Institutes of Health all helped pay for this study.
