Maryland is the second U.S. state to pass a law banning the antibiotics overuse in farms like poultry, the law is aimed at battling the rise of a dangerous antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which is known as "superbugs."

The Maryland's Keep Antibiotics Effective Act, which is aimed to end the practice that public health experts said can increase the spread of superbugs, takes effect on 1st October, after the Governor Larry Hogan has declined to sign or veto the law in the last week. The farmers in Maryland have to comply with the law until 1st January, 2018.

Roughly 70 percent of the antibiotics, that are important for the human medicine are sold in the United States for the use in meat and also dairy production. Medical researchers said that the overuse of such antibiotics will diminish their effectiveness in fighting the disease in humans by contributing to the antibiotic resistance.

The World Health Organization has been warning that the human infections from the antibiotic-resistant bacteria pose a great threat to the global health.

California in the year 2015 has adopted tough rules for the antibiotic use in farms. The law, which takes effect on 1st January, also restricts the regular use of the antibiotics for disease prevention and also bans antibiotic use on the fatten up animals.

The laws in Maryland and also California go a step forward than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's guidelines, that seek to prohibit the usage of antibiotics for growth promotion in the farm animals but do not address the routine use of antibiotics for the disease prevention.

The new state rules reserve the antibiotics use only for treatment of the sick animals or to control the verified disease outbreak, not for the routine disease prevention, said Matthew Wellington, a antibiotics program director for the U.S. PIRG, which has supported the Maryland legislation. The opponents of the legislation included the Maryland Farm Bureau.

The laws come as the restaurant chains such as Chipotle Mexican Grill Incorporation, Panera Bread Company, McDonald's Corporation and also Subway are working with their meat suppliers to restrain the use of important human antibiotics.

The Maryland-based Perdue Farms, a major poultry supplier in U.S. and also the state's largest, said in February 2016 that, more than two-thirds of its chickens and also half of its turkeys are raised without using the antibiotics.

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Mrudula Duddempudi.