Via the New York Times, we learn that a suit from the National Resource Defence Council, Union of Concerned Scientists and others has restarted a decades-long process of removing human antibiotics from use in commercial agriculture.

A federal magistrate judge on Thursday ordered the Obama administration to alert drug makers that the government may soon ban the common agricultural use of popular antibiotics in animals because the practice may encourage the proliferation of dangerous infections and imperil public health.

The use of penicilin and other common drugs in livestock has been blamed on a rise in antibiotic-resistent bacteria in recent years. The fight to keep these drugs in circulation in farms is not over, however: 

In 1977, the F.D.A. announced that it would begin the process of banning these uses. But the powerful House and Senate appropriations committees passed resolutions urging the F.D.A. not to follow through on these efforts, and the agency retreated.... Siobhan DeLancey, an F.D.A. spokeswoman, would not say whether the government planned to appeal.

Read the full story here.

"Organic cattle" via the USDA.