Q&A with Joseph Fischer on Fischer Farms receiving CRAU certification
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Dubois County-based Fischer Farms received the Certified Responsible Antibiotic Use certification from The George Washington University’s Antibiotic Resistance Action Center earlier this year. Since 2021, the farm has worked to achieve these standards that aim to preserve antibiotic efficacy by only treating animals and humans when medically necessary.
Joseph Fischer, CRAU project manager at Fischer Farms, spoke with Inside INdiana Business about being the first beef cattle farm in the United States to receive the CRAU certification.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tell me about the process of receiving the CRAU certification.
This group of mostly pediatricians, immunologists and other doctors were looking to create this coalition that would meet on a quarterly basis and talk about this perceived risk of overuse of antibiotics in agriculture and the impacts on the human side of things as far as antibiotic resistance of medications that humans rely on when we get sick.
They reached out because they heard about us and saw on our website that we responsibly use antibiotics, and we minimally use them. They asked if we would join their group. I looked into them more, and it turned out to be a group that aligned with what we care about. But they also brought the scientific side of it. I have learned a lot from them as far as the risks to humans of overusing antibiotics.
We started off doing it more for what we perceive as cleaner meat, healthier meat and humane treatment of our cattle. But what they brought to the group was the longer-term view of the implications of overusing antibiotics.
Then, after talking with them, doing those quarterly meetings, they said, “Hey, we have this Certified Responsible Antibiotic Use standard for beef cattle. Would you like to be the pilot farm to get this certification?” And also help go through the manual writing process, getting the audit approved by the USDA for beef cattle, because they had done it on the poultry side, but they hadn’t done it on the beef side yet. We said we’d be happy to.
We learned there’s a lot of paperwork that goes into establishing a standard with the USDA. We didn’t change any of our practices. It was more like, “How do you do this in an auditable way?” We also wanted to do it in a way where it could be replicable for other farms. We didn’t want to set this all up and make it so focused on Fischer Farms.
We wanted to help them take into consideration what other farms do, how their practices are and how they may be laid out both on a small and large scale. Because if it’s only good for a certain size farm, then that’s not good for the mission of the certification itself. We worked with them going back and forth and understanding what documentation would be needed. We went through the audit in November of last year, and then we got our certification.
You mentioned a lot of paperwork. What were some other challenges during this process?
We did the Quality Systems Assessment, a USDA standard for audits. That means you have to set up the audit in a particular way. There’s a manual of 80 pages of all the different things you have to do. How you’re documenting things is primarily what most of it is. What are you doing to document the things you’re doing to minimize the use of antibiotics? If an animal gets sick, how do you treat it? How are you documenting the animal’s treatment? Who do you talk to first?
Then, there’s a training component. How does all of your team know that the CRAU standard is something we follow? And make sure they have training quizzes and things to make sure that they are all familiar with it. That spans from the folks on our team who are checking on the cows every day all the way to the folks who are packaging the meat.
Because that’s part of the component as well, making sure that everything upstream is labeled appropriately when we’re selling in the market, because that’s what we’re trying to do, create that awareness at the consumer level that this meat was raised in a clean way. You can be confident knowing that it’s raised in a clean way because we have a USDA-backed certification. It also raises awareness for folks that there is an overuse of antibiotics in animal livestock production.
How do you plan to use the CRAU certification to influence other cattle farmers?
We are optimistic there will be folks wanting to jump on board. There are other farms doing this already and won’t necessarily have to change their practices. It’s an easy way for them to say, “Hey, we’re doing this, too. We’re Certified Responsible Antibiotic Use.” Then maybe if there are farms that have to tweak one or two things, it might be enough to get them over the edge.
At a national level, generating awareness of the overuse of antibiotics in beef production is a good thing because if consumers don’t know it’s an issue, they’re less likely to make purchasing decisions based on it. At the end of the day, the consumer is who’s driving upstream change. Their purchasing decisions are going to impact the practices that are happening on farms. Different standards like this can help the consumer awareness component.
What are the obstacles to getting cattle farmers on board with CRAU?
The obstacles are somewhat on the paperwork side of things. A lot of times, we’re doing the things, but maybe we’re not as great about writing everything down and keeping accurate inventories. Which is important, but that’s going to be an obstacle for some folks getting into that habit.
There’s also a cost component to going through an audit. You have to pay the auditor for their time appropriately. That could be a hurdle as well. But if you’re direct marketing your products, and your consumers are asking for that certification, those efforts can be justified.
What about challenges in getting consumers to recognize the CRAU designation?
There’s always going to be that unfamiliarity with a new certification. There are different things where you go to the store and you recognize, “Oh, that’s what that means.” CRAU, maybe at first, won’t be as recognizable, but our hope is that it’s something that consumers will seek out.
Folks who I’ve talked to and explained what it is, they’re all about it. They think it’s important. But it’s getting that educational piece to come alongside it. And you only have so much space on a label. There’s only so much opportunity to explain it on the package itself. It requires some background storytelling.
Why is responsible antibiotic use important for the future of farming and public health?
It requires farmers and ranchers to take into consideration all the components of raising that cow to minimize the opportunity for antibiotics. If you’re doing things from an animal-raising perspective to keep your cattle healthier, and you don’t require antibiotics, then you can minimize the use a lot more easily. But if you have that antibiotic crutch to lean back on, then maybe your practices don’t have to be quite as strict.
My vet explained some of this to me, that in the beef world, antibiotics used to be allowed to be given to cattle for weight gain. The FDA did come back and say, “You can’t do that anymore, but you can give it to cattle at the same dosage rates for preventative measures.” So we saw a little bit of a decrease in use, but there are still quite a few cattle in the United States getting that for preventative use, and maybe they don’t necessarily need it.
That’s where the public health component comes in. The folks on this antibiotics question are concerned that if we’re overusing antibiotics in this microdose way, where [cattle are] getting it with every bite of feed, that bacteria is eventually going to come up with a way around it, and those life saving medications or antibiotics won’t be as effective when you or I or even the more immunocompromised folks need those life saving antibiotics.
If we can do things from an animal-raising perspective where we minimize the use, we can also have subsequent effects on public health by keeping those antibiotics effective. I’ve seen studies that have shown Europe uses four to five times fewer antibiotics than what we’re using in the United States. They’ve shown that there’s some opportunity there. At Fischer Farms, we believe, based on our experience, that’s the case.
What other initiatives is Fischer Farms working on this year?
We’re still working on some farm-to-school programs and trying to work with some of the K-12 schools on getting some local products into their schools.
We’re also continuing to look at adding other producers to our network. For example, we added corn to our offering for our customers. We’re diving into what our wholesale customers are looking for as far as different products and things that we can add to our network, so we can grow the breadth of products we’re offering to those customers outside of beef, pork and turkey.