The multi-syllabic drug names all sound the same, the federal directives governing their use have opaque, uninformative titles, and the sides disputing the pro and con each have decades of arguments on their respective sides. Which can make it, you know, a little hard to catch up.

But if you are at all concerned about this issue—and really, any meat-eater should be—you can barely do better, for an introduction, than an obscure government document published a few weeks ago by the US Food and Drug Administration: the 2012 Summary Report on Antimicrobials Sold or Distributed for Use in Food-Producing Animals. (You can find the original here.)

Before I get to what’s in the report, here’s a brief primer: Since about 1950,