Thought antibiotics weren’t allowed in certified organic foods? That’s mostly true, with one important exception: Organic farmers are allowed to spray apple and pear trees with antibiotics, in order to prevent a bacterial disease called fire blight. But in 2011, concerned about the impact on human health associated with the overuse of antibiotics, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) informed organic apple and pear growers that antibiotics would no longer be allowed to be used after October 21, 2014. Now, due to pressure from the organic apple and pear industry, the NOSB is considering pushing back that date until 2016.

Please sign the petition below by April 8, and add your own comments. Ask the NOSB to stick with the agreed schedule and get antibiotics out of organic apples and pears by October 2014.

Fire blight is caused by the bacterium Erwinia amylovora. It kills the shoots of apples, pears, and some ornamental trees, giving them the appearance of having been scorched by fire. The two antibiotics used to prevent fire blight are streptomycin and tetracycline.

Why worry about antibiotics on apples and pears?
Every time you eat an organic apple or pear, you risk exposing your gut flora to measureable levels of streptomycin and tetracycline. This increases your chances of developing resistance to these important antibiotics, both of which are essential to treating human disease. Tetracycline is used to treat common infections of the respiratory tract, sinuses, middle ear, and urinary tract, as well as for anthrax, plague, cholera, and Legionnaire’s disease. Streptomycin is used to treat tuberculosis, tularemia, plague, bacterial endocarditis, brucellosis and other diseases.

The USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) recognizes and respects the powerful role antibiotics play in protecting human health, and the fact that antibiotics lose their effectiveness if they are overused. Resistant genes already exist for tetracycline and streptomycin. Every time they are used, resistance is increased by killing bacteria susceptible to the antibiotics and leaving the others. Once resistant genes are present in any bacteria, they increase the pool of resistant genes and the likelihood that human pathogens will acquire that resistance.

That’s why organic rules prohibit the use of antibiotics in animal feed, or to stimulate the growth or production of livestock. This avoids the reckless abuse of antibiotics, a common practice on non-organic factory farms that have become breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The use of antibiotics on fruit trees may not play as important a role in antibiotic resistance as the rampant use of non-therapeutic antibiotics in livestock, but it does have an impact on the pool of antibiotic-resistant bacteria – something organic agriculture should not be a part of.

The industry argues that you would have to eat 1000 apples a day to reach the acceptable daily intake of streptomycin, and that that the highest tetracycline residue level detected was 0.25 parts-per-million (ppm), well below the permitted rate of 0.35 ppm. But for consumers who expect that their organic food would contain no antibiotic residues whatsoever, the fact that we – and our children – are being exposed to measureable levels of antibiotics by eating organic apples and pears is unacceptable.

Do organic apple and pear growers have to use antibiotics?
No. As the video on this page explains, there are other ways to control fire blight that don’t include using antibiotics. In fact, U.S. growers exporting to the European Union (E.U.) comply with the E.U. rule that says apples and pears must be produced without antibiotics to be sold as organic.

Additionally, there are some apple and pear varieties that are naturally resistant to fire blight. You can reduce your exposure to antibiotic residues and give growers an incentive to eliminate antibiotic use by demanding resistant varieties. Beyond Pesticides has compiled a list you can print and take with you when you go shopping.

Please sign the petition below by April 8, and add your own comments. Ask the NOSB to stick with the agreed schedule and get antibiotics out of organic apples and pears by October 2014.

Also, if you’re in or near Portland, Ore., where the meeting will be held, you can sign up here before March 19, to attend the meeting and submit your comments in person.