Help Stop the Spread of Antibiotic Resistance

It’s Fall, the time when many of us get bronchitis or a sinus infection. Our doctor prescribes an antibiotic and we feel better in a matter of days, thankfully. But when we expose bacteria in antibiotics, a few survive and resistance spreads. It happens in our own bodies. It happens in hospitals. It happens in feedlots where antibiotics are overused to help animals grow larger and survive unsanitary, crowded conditions. Now, experts at the Centers for Disease Control are sounding an alarm. If we don’t get serious about reducing the overuse of antibiotics, we face the end of the antibiotic era.?For those who already die each year from resistant infections, the post-antibiotic era is here. But it isn’t too late. Emergency action to reduce overuse in both medicine and agriculture can go a long way towards preserving antibiotics for human health. The top Federal administrators of programs overseeing food and health care can jump on this without waiting on Congress. Tell them to act now!

Get Soda off Restaurant Children’s Menus

McDonald?s recently announced it would no longer list soda on the kids? meal section of its menu board.? Subway, Chipotle, Arby?s, and Panera Bread have alsotaken soda off their children?s menus.? But still, most of the top chains, including Wendy?s, Burger King, and Chili?s, still promote sugary beverages as a part of their children’s menus. While taking soda off the menu is not the only improvement needed to make restaurant children’s meals healthier, soda and other sugar drinks uniquely promote obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. ?Sugar-sweetened beverages are the largest source of calories in children?s diets and provide nearly half of their added sugars intake.? Drinking just one sugary drink each day increases a child?s odds of becoming obese by 60 percent. Please take a minute to ask the top restaurant chains to take soda off their kids? menus. If McDonald?s can do it, so can they.? Click here to sign the petition.

Help Stop the Depletion of Bluefin Tuna Populations

The National Marine Fisheries Service has recently proposed a new rule to reduce the wasteful catch of bluefin tuna on longlines. While the rule is a step in the right direction, some changes are necessary to better protect this important fish. Each year, longlines, stretching up to 40 miles long with hundreds of baited hooks, are used to catch yellowfin tuna and swordfish, but they also catch more than 80 unintended marine species, including the deeply depleted Atlantic bluefin tuna. Because longline fishermen are only allowed to retain a limited amount of bluefin tuna, they must discard many of the bluefin they catch back to sea, even though they come up dead. A significant amount of this wasteful bluefin tuna catch occurs off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, where bluefin tuna concentrate at certain times of the year, and in the Gulf of Mexico, where bluefin tuna come to breed. This wasteful catch is harming the Atlantic bluefin tuna population.? Blue Ocean Institute is writing to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to urge them to strengthen the proposed rule and provide stronger protection to bluefin tuna. If you would like to let your voice be heard, click here for a sample letter you can send. You can submit your letter electronically here or mail to Thomas Warren, Highly Migratory Species Management Division, NMFS, 55 Great Republic Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930. Please mark the outside of the envelope ?Comments on Amendment 7 to the HMS FMP.?