Misuse of antibiotics in healthy animals is breeding antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Government lab tests of supermarket meat show surprisingly high numbers of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In 2011, nearly 30 million pounds of antibiotics were sold for use in food animals - roughly four times the quantity sold to treat people.
Legislation has been introduced in the both the U.S. House and Senate to help reverse this trend by requiring the federal Food and Drug Administration to review approvals of antibiotics for nontherapeutic use in food animals. The agency would withdraw those approvals that threaten human health by encouraging proliferation of superbugs. When superbugs infect humans, the illnesses they trigger are hard to treat and in some cases lead to death.