I’m very excited about this news story. California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill requiring antimicrobial drugs to be available only through veterinary prescription and not simply for growth promotion. It’s a small step in limiting widespread resistance from overuse of antibiotics, but hopefully it serves as an example to other states and nations. China and India particularly would benefit from a law like this since antibiotic resistance is a massive and out of control problem for them. It’s great seeing some political action, even if there’s still a long way to go before antimicrobials are no longer misused on a large scale.
As a follow-up, here is an article about Denmark’s decreasing antimicrobial use in livestock: http://phys.org/news/2015-10-decrease-antimicrobial-animals-denmark.html