So it turns out you really do deserve a break today at McDonald’s. Or at least a day two years from now. The fast-food chain with more than 14,000 restaurants in the United States has pledged to phase out the use of chickens treated with antibiotics by March 2017.

It’s about time. Chipotle, Panera, Wendy’s and Chick-fil-A are already onboard, and we hope the rest of the chain restaurants will join the movement. Unless the use of antibiotics in food is restricted to treatment rather than widely used for prevention, the lifesaving drugs will become useless for treating people. And we can’t count on the Food and Drug administration to help. It indefensibly places the profits of the meat industry above the very lives of Americans.

Nearly 80 percent of antibiotics sold in the United States are given to healthy farm animals. They promote growth and help to prevent the spread of diseases in animals packed in close quarters. Research scientists and the American Medical Association have been trying for decades to get the FDA to ban the practice. The Centers for Disease Control documented last year that nearly 2 million Americans fell ill from antibiotic-resistant infections. More than 23,000 died.

The European Union banned using antibiotics for growth promotion nearly a decade ago. The science showing the presence of antibiotics in food is making them less and less effective in humans. But as recently as 2011, the FDA wimped out again, timidly asking pharmaceutical companies to please voluntarily reduces sales of antibiotics for use in food animals. Oh, that worked: Sales have jumped by nearly 2.9 million pounds, roughly a 10 percent increase.

McDonald’s purchases more than 3 percent of all chickens sold in the United States. It’s still not health food, but it’s great to see a corporation show respect for its consumers and force suppliers to do the right thing.

That’s more than we can say for the FDA.