Certified Responsible Antibiotic Use

The Antibiotic Resistance Action Center (ARAC) added the Certified Responsible Antibiotic Use (CRAU) Beef and Pork to its existing CRAU Poultry Standard, creating a more complete suite of responsible antibiotic use standards for the meat and poultry industries. The CRAU standards minimize the use of veterinary antibiotics that are identical or closely related to drugs used in human medicine, and preserve their efficacy for when antibiotics are most needed in both human and animal health. Since 2015, AMS has been approving poultry companies to the CRAU standard, managed by ARAC at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University. In 2023 AMS will begin auditing CRAU beef and pork operations.

Poultry, beef and pork producers in conformance with CRAU are prohibited from using antibiotics with analogues in human medicine routinely or without clear medical justification, and such use must be rare, well documented, and prescribed by a veterinarian.

The scope of the CRAU verification includes a comprehensive farm-to-package review of relevant processes and facilities. The audit must document systems for proper identification and segregation of CRAU products from farm to package.

To meet the requirements of the CRAU standard, companies must be audited through either the USDA Process Verified Program (PVP) or the USDA Quality System Assessment (QSA) Program, which are defined in the QAD 1001 and the QAD 1002 procedures, respectively. Both programs ensure that the CRAU requirements are supported by a documented quality management system. To ensure conformance to the CRAU standard, audit reports will be submitted to ARAC.

The following approved companies have been found in conformance with the requirements of the CRAU and with all criteria of their approved quality management systems.

Standards

The new CRAU standards can be found on the ARAC website.

Additional Resources