The Food and Drug Administration said 25 of 26 drug companies that were asked to phase out antibiotics to promote growth in farm animals have agreed to comply with the agency’s voluntary plan. 
 
 The development announced Wednesday clears a major hurdle in the FDA’s push to combat growing human resistance to antibiotics because of their overuse. 
 
 Farms use about 80% of the nation's antibiotics supply, sometimes in healthy animals to speed up growth or prevent illness in unsanitary conditions. 
 
 Their widespread application is being blamed for the rise of superbugs that afflict 2 million people in the U.S. and contribute to 23,000 deaths each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
 
 The FDA first proposed a plan in December that asked major drug makers to remove growth promotion claims on their products, effectively making it illegal to prescribe the drugs to livestock for anything other than medical reasons. 
 
 The antibiotics in question are only those with similar applications in human medicine. Known as medically important antimicrobials, they include popular drugs such as penicillin and tetracycline. 
 
 Skeptics feared that manufacturers would resist the plan. The FDA said a voluntary approach was necessary because banning the drugs would have resulted in lengthy and costly litigation. 
 
 The FDA said the 25 companies that agreed to the plan make 99.6% of the targeted drugs. They include major manufacturers such as Bayer Healthcare and Novartis Animal Health. 
 
 Former Pfizer subsidiary Zoetis and Elanco, which is owned by Eli Lilly & Co., both signed on to the plan when it was first announced last year. 
 
 “The FDA and drug makers appear to have passed the first big test of the agency’s voluntary approach,” said Laura Rogers, director for the campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming for the Pew Charitable Trusts. “This is very encouraging … but there’s a lot more to do.” 
 
 Rogers said the FDA also needs to crack down on antibiotic use to compensate for overcrowded and unsanitary conditions on farms. 
 
 While no statistics exist, Avinash Kar, an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, fears that antibiotics could still be used widely for this reason. 
 
 “The FDA is just limiting antibiotic use for growth promotion, but the same animals are given the same antibiotics because of the crowded conditions,” Kar said. “Current levels of antibiotic use are likely to continue, but just with a different justification and label. That won’t do anything to protect human health.” ||||| Black Angus cattle stand in a pen before being auctioned off at the Muskingum County Livestock Auction in Zanesville, Ohio. (Ty Wright/Bloomberg News) 
 
 The Food and Drug Administration took steps Wednesday to try to phase out the use of certain antibiotics in livestock and ensure that drugs given to animals on factory farms are prescribed by veterinarians to prevent and treat diseases, rather than merely to boost growth. 
 
 The agency finalized recommendations asking animal drug manufacturers to voluntarily alter their labels so that farmers would no longer be allowed to use antibiotics merely to make animals grow faster. In addition, the agency wants to curb over-the-counter sales of antibiotics and require farmers to get approval from a veterinarian before administering the drugs to livestock. 
 
 The announcement, welcomed by representatives of the agricultural industry but panned by some consumer advocates who had hoped for more aggressive action, comes amid growing concern that the widespread use of antibiotics in animals is helping to create resistant “superbugs” that sicken and kill thousands of Americans each year. 
 
 The vast majority of antibiotics sold each year in the United States — by some estimates as much as 80 percent — are used in agriculture rather than in human medicine. For years, consumer and environmental groups have hounded Congress and the FDA to regulate more stringently the amount of antibiotics given to animals, but the government has done little to forcibly limit the practice. 
 
 Michael Taylor, the FDA’s top food safety official, said the agency’s action will create significant and meaningful changes to the agriculture industry’s status quo. 
 
 “There will be fewer approved uses, and the remaining uses will be under tighter control,” Taylor told reporters Wednesday, adding that agency officials decided to make the new recommendations voluntary because they believed it would offer the quickest and most efficient route to altering current practices. “It avoids legalistic, product-by-product regulatory proceedings that would take years to complete.” 
 
 Companies will have 90 days to say whether they plan to sign on, followed by three years to implement the changes. FDA officials on Wednesday said some of the biggest animal-drug producers have already backed the agency’s plan, and Taylor said he remained confident that more companies soon would follow suit. 
 
 Public health activists and consumer advocates, who have raised alarms in recent years about the potential consequences of the overuse of antibiotics in animals, praised the FDA for trying to address the decades-old problem of antimicrobial resistance. But they also argued that the agency’s efforts lack teeth, and that companies too easily will be able to ignore or circumvent the new standards. They also said they worried that the policy would allow companies to continue to use the drugs to compensate for cramped and unsanitary living conditions that can foster disease in animals. 
 
 Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.), a microbiologist who has unsuccessfully tried to pass legislation limiting the use of certain antibiotics to humans and sick animals, called the agency’s efforts “an inadequate response” that “falls woefully short of what is needed to address a public health crisis.” 
 
 Avinash Kar, a health attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the policy “an early holiday gift to industry.” 
 
 “It is a hollow gesture that does little to tackle a widely recognized threat to human health,” Kar said in a statement. “FDA has essentially followed a voluntary approach for more than 35 years, but use of these drugs to raise animals has increased.” 
 
 Taylor said he understands the strong opinions surrounding the issue and the lingering skepticism about voluntary regulations. 
 
 “There are a lot of reasons why companies have an incentive to take this action,” Taylor said. He added, “We reserve our ability to take regulatory action.” 
 
 In a call Wednesday afternoon, representatives from industry lobbying groups such as the Animal Health Institute and the National Pork Producers Council reiterated their support of the FDA’s new policies, which the agency first proposed last year. 
 
 “It’s going to mean a real change for how antibiotics are used on the farm,” said Liz Wagstrom, chief veterinarian for the NPPC. 
 
 Richard Carnevale, AHI’s vice president for regulatory, scientific and international affairs, said that even though the new recommendations are voluntary, it makes little sense for companies to try to ignore or avoid them. “They risk the goodwill of their customers, and they risk the potential wrath of the FDA,” he said. 
 
 Although the problem of antimicrobial resistance has been acknowledged for decades, the overuse of antibiotics in animals has taken on a higher public profile in recent years, as health officials and consumer groups have issued more and more dire warnings about the potential consequences. 
 
 In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an alarming report about the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant infections, which kill an estimated 23,000 Americans each year. While most of those infections arise in hospitals and nursing home settings, officials underscored the massive use of antibiotics in animals as a serious concern. 
 
 “Resistant bacteria can contaminate the foods that come from those animals, and people who consume these foods can develop antibiotic-resistant infections,” the CDC’s report stated. “The use of antibiotics for promoting growth is not necessary, and the practice should be phased out.” 
 
 In October, a separate report from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future found that pharmaceutical and farm lobbies had successfully blocked legislative reforms to the widespread use of antibiotics in U.S. livestock, and the organization said regulation had grown only weaker under the Obama administration. 
 
 Those findings came five years after a detailed report from a Pew Charitable Trust commission, which found that the constant feeding of antibiotics to animals in order to plump them up and ward off potential disease was making those drugs less and less effective and the bacteria they were meant to treat ever-more resistant to medicines.
– The FDA's first attempt to limit antibiotic use in farm animals appears to be working: All but one of the 26 drug companies asked to curb the use of antibiotics in animals to promote growth have agreed to do so, though the plan is voluntary. The plan will see the drug companies remove claims of growth promotion from their products, which will effectively make it illegal for the drugs to be used on livestock without a valid medical reason. Only antibiotics used similarly by humans—think penicillin and tetracycline—will be affected, and the 25 companies in agreement with the plan make 99.6% of those drugs. "I think that within three years we're going to see growth promotion gone when it comes to antibiotics," one expert tells the Wall Street Journal. It's a big step forward, especially considering fears that drug makers would not come onboard, the Los Angeles Times reports. The FDA is attempting to fight the overuse of antibiotics because it is blamed for the rise of drug-resistant bacteria. But an attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council says more must be done, because farms also use antibiotics to prevent sickness in animals due to crowded and unsanitary conditions. "The FDA is just limiting antibiotic use for growth promotion, but the same animals are given the same antibiotics because of the crowded conditions," he says. "Current levels of antibiotic use are likely to continue, but just with a different justification and label. That won’t do anything to protect human health."