For over a decade, a group of food safety, environmental, and animal welfare nonprofits has petitioned the US Food and Drug Administration — which Kennedy now oversees — to ban the use of one of the most controversial of those drugs: ractopamine hydrochloride.

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Some studies, including a couple conducted by the drugmaker — Elanco — have shown that ractopamine is associated with a number of issues in pigs, including hoof lesions, fatigue, increased aggression, and metabolic stress. 

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Even more than concerns over animal welfare, the uncertainty over ractopamine’s effect on consumers’ health has courted international controversy. Those concerns have led to countries rejecting shipments of US pork and beef…

Prohibiting US meat producers from using a drug that benefits the industry at the expense of animals — and possibly consumers — would show his [Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s] grandiose promises to reform the American food system are more than empty rhetoric. 

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