With wintery weather comes more cold and flu bugs, including strep throat and other bacterial ailments treated with antibiotics. In addition to a prescription for antibiotics, some patients this winter might also get a short lecture from the doctor about the dangers of the overuse of antibiotics — namely, bugs that morph and become antibiotic resistant.

For years, medical experts have warned of the dangers of “superbugs” that are not treatable with today’s antibiotics. These antibiotic-resistant organisms can be deadly, as doctors are powerless to treat the patient because today’s medicines no longer work. In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 2 million Americans a year are sickened by antibiotic-resistant germs. It’s estimated 23,000 people die every year because their infections cannot be treated by antibiotics. Ten or so years ago, these same infections were treatable with antibiotics, but the germs are mutating, adapting.

These illnesses are reportedly costing the U.S. about $23 billion in additional treatment cost, including extended hospitalizations.

While overprescribing by doctors has created part of this problem, the other, larger part has come from some of the food we eat. The U.S. meat industry has for decades routinely fed animals low-doses of antibiotics mixed in the feed to help reduce sickness caused by animals living in cramped conditions on factory farms. Farmes also found that lacing livestock feed with antibiotics helped the animals grow fatter faster, meaning they could be processed faster, making the farmers and livestock industry more money.

But the antibiotics fed to livestock is affecting humans eating the meat — and this contributes to the growth of antibiotic-resistant germs. It’s estimated that 80 percent of the antibiotics used today are used by the agribusiness in feed given to livestock.

Current law allows farmers to essentially buy these antibiotics over the counter to be added to livestock feed, without demonstrating a medical need or having a veterinarian involved.

Last week, the federal Food and Drug Administration issued a new policy intended to curb the routine use of antibiotics in livestock. The FDA rule, which will be phased in over three years, will no longer allow farmers to buy antibiotics without a veterinarian’s prescription. The use of antibiotics in agribusiness operations should be dramatically reduced by this policy change.

It’s unfortunate that it’s taken the FDA so long to act. Warnings about the overuse of antibiotics in animals have been heard for 30 years or more. But the powerful industrial food industry was able to lobby Congress to prevent restrictions from being enacted.

Even with this encouraging FDA proposal, there are concerns. It is not mandatory and there are potential loopholes. Still, it’s encouraging to learn the makers of the antiobiotics used on farms are behind the new policy.

The motiveation for change is powerful. Increasingly ominous warnings about the deadly consequences of antibiotic-resistant germs bringing an end to the “miracle drug” status of antibiotics should produce broad public support for change.

Patients and their doctors should resist overuse of antibiotics. And farming operations should be expected to also do their part to reduce the antibiotics getting into our bodies through the food we eat.