Today is World Consumer Rights Day

Today is being observed as World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD). The theme for World Consumer Rights Day this year is ‘Antibiotics off the menu’.  The theme is aimed at getting fast food companies to make a global commitment to stop the sale of meat raised with the routine use of antibiotics important to human medicine.

According to Consumers International, antibiotic resistance is rising to dangerously high levels in all parts of the world. The World Health Organisation has warned that, without urgent action, we are heading for a post-antibiotic era, in which important medicines stop working and common infections and minor injuries can once again kill. Growing antibiotic resistance is driven by over use of antibiotics.  Around half of the antibiotics produced globally are used in agriculture, with much of this being used to promote faster growth and to prevent, rather than treat, disease. Despite worldwide concern about the overuse of antibiotics, their use in agriculture is due to increase by two thirds by 2030: from 63,200 tons in 2010, to 105,600 tons in 2030.

World Consumer Rights Day is an annual occasion for celebration and solidarity within the international consumer movement. It marks the date in 1962 when President John F Kennedy first outlined the definition of Consumer Rights. WCRD is an opportunity to promote the basic rights of all consumers, for demanding that those rights are respected and protected, and for protesting the market abuses and social injustices which undermine them. WCRD was first observed on 15 March, 1983, and has since become an important occasion for mobilising citizen action.