Whole Foods is sued over ‘No Antibiotics, Ever’ beef claim
By Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) – Complete Meals Market was sued on Tuesday by three customers and an animal welfare nonprofit, in a lawsuit accusing the Amazon.com Inc unit of falsely advertising and marketing beef with the slogan “No Antibiotics, Ever.”
The proposed class motion stated latest unbiased laboratory testing discovered that Complete Meals’ beef contained antibiotic and different pharmaceutical residue, which means that cattle had been handled with antibiotics or different prescribed drugs.
Peymon Khaghani, Jason Rose, Sara Safari and the nonprofit Farm Ahead stated this creates “critical well being dangers” by contributing to antibiotic-resistant micro organism that buyers ultimately ingest, and which can trigger infections that can not be handled with present antibiotics.
Complete Meals markets no less than 42 beef merchandise as freed from antibiotics, and fees “substantial” value premiums primarily based on that declare, in keeping with the grievance filed within the federal court docket in Santa Ana, California.
Neither Complete Meals nor Amazon instantly responded to requests for remark.
Farm Ahead stated its mission consists of efforts to “promote conscientious meals selections, scale back farmed animal struggling, and advance sustainable agriculture.”
The grievance stated lab assessments in 2021 and 2022 of meat samples from six Complete Meals areas in Chicago, Salt Lake Metropolis, San Francisco and Virginia “revealed the presence of pharmaceutical residue, together with antibiotic residue.”
It additionally stated that after studying from Farm Ahead in regards to the ends in April, Complete Meals Chief Government John Mackey unsubscribed from the nonprofit’s electronic mail checklist “after having been a board member and mailing checklist recipient for over a decade.”
Mackey just isn’t a defendant within the lawsuit.
The plaintiffs need Complete Meals to right the way it markets its beef, and pay unspecified compensatory and punitive damages to buyers who overpaid.
The case is Safari et al v Complete Meals Market Inc, U.S. District Court docket, Central District of California, No. 22-01562.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; modifying by Richard Pullin)
