A guest editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine calls for a ban on the use of antibiotics in healthy farm animals for growth promotion, calling three studies in the issue the "smoking gun" linking the use of antibiotics in animal production with antibiotic resistance in humans.

One study shows the high prevalence of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella in ground meats, the second suggests that a drug (Virginiamycin) used only in animals has compromised the effectiveness of a human drug (Synercid), and the third demonstrates that antibiotic-resistant bacteria can persist for at least two weeks in the human gut