“F.D.A. Restricts Use of Antibiotics in Livestock,” read the headlines earlier this week (specifically in the paper of record, the New York Times).

At face value, that seems like terrific news -- a complete reversal of the decision the Food and Drug Administration made just before the holidays. The week before Christmas, the agency reneged on a 35-year-old pledge to forbid farmers from administering low levels of antibiotics to livestock -- not to fight disease, but to increase the healthy animals’ growth rates.

It’s been known for more than three decades that administering these sub-therapeutic doses to farm animals creates drug-resistant “superbugs” that can infect humans -- a serious concern of medical professionals (see “You Want Superbugs With That?”).

But dig a little deeper, and this week’s announcement seems more like a smokescreen than genuine action. In its press release, the FDA proclaimed that it had ordered livestock producers to stop administering low doses of only a single class of antibiotics. Known as cephalosporins, these drugs treat strep throat, bronchitis and urinary tract infections in humans.

Farmers can still give other categories of human antibiotics to healthy livestock.

The FDA also fails to mention that the move is nothing more than the belated enactment of its own July 2008 decision to ban cephalosporins, which was delayed under pressure from agribusiness interests. If the prohibition is not shot down once again during a 60-day comment period, it will go into effect in April. Nor does the FDA mention that cephalosporins would have been one of many types of antibiotics covered by the wide-reaching ban that the FDA disavowed just two weeks ago.

“This is a modest first step by the FDA,” said Rep. Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat and microbiologist, in a press release, “but we’re really just looking at the tip of the iceberg. We don’t have time for the FDA to ploddingly take half-measures.”

Nor is there time for the FDA’s PR stunts. The agency’s efforts should be directed toward fulfilling its legal mandate: protecting the health of Americans.