FDA Crackdown on Antibiotics Relies on Unproven Steps

A delegation of public-health advocates filed into the suburban Chicago headquarters of McDonald’s Corp. last January to deliver a tough message: A decade after the fast-food giant’s groundbreaking promise to reduce medically important antibiotics fed to the animals it buys, the policy had glaring loopholes and questionable impact.

Many farmers and food companies were using antibiotics not for their medicinal properties, but because they also make animals grow faster or become heavier. The company’s plan was supposed to address concerns that persistent use of such drugs on animals might increase the resistance of dangerous microbes to antibiotics. Such bugs could then be transmitted to humans who ate the meat. But the McDonald’s policy was easy to sidestep, the health advocates told company officials: Livestock producers or farmers could continue to give millions of healthy animals antibiotics for the purpose of preventing disease -- an exception the company’s program allowed.