The FDA is cracking down on antibiotic use in farm animals to protect human health. Part of the issue is that the flow of antibiotics up the food chain has helped cultivate antibiotic-resistant infections, a situation which is further compounded by an overuse of antibiotics in humans.
As reported by the New York Times, the FDA’s proposal—which is aimed at preventing farmers from using antibiotics as a way to fatten livestock—will go into effect over three years, and is expected to ease the resistant-infection problem by “tightening the use of classes of antibiotics that save human lives, including penicillin, azithromycin and tetracycline.
The CDC estimates that 23,000 people die of antibiotic-resistant infections every year.
