"The Food and Drug Administration said it would continue allowing the widespread use of a class of powerful antibiotics in food-producing animals, making a last-minute reversal after calling the practice a public-health risk in July. The agency's bid this summer to ban many uses of cephalosporin drugs in cows, swine, chickens and other animals came under fire from the industry. Agriculture groups and animal-drug makers, including Pfizer Inc., said the antibiotics are needed to prevent many infectious diseases in animals. Public-health officials and the American Medical Association are worried that excessive use of antibiotics -- including in animals -- can promote resistance and produce strains of bacteria that threaten human life. Cephalosporins treat respiratory diseases in cattle and swine but are also often given 'off-label' for uses not approved by the FDA to poultry or more generally in livestock for non-approved infectious diseases. On July 3, the FDA announced a planned crackdown on off-label uses in animals, citing 'the importance of cephalosporin drugs for treating disease in humans.' That position was reiterated in September by the FDA's director of veterinary drugs, Steven Vaughn. 'We have [bacterial organisms] moving around the world that we have never seen before,' he told a conference, according to Dairy Herd Management magazine. Dr. Vaughn, who couldn't be reached for comment, told the group that antibiotic-resistant bacteria are becoming more common in cattle." Alicia Mundy and Jared Favole report for the Wall Street Journal December 9, 2008. Full story is accessible through Google (search on "FDA").