Reduction of antibiotic use in animals “let’s go Dutch”

Dik Mevius,Dick Heederik

doi:10.1007/s00003-014-0874-z

Abstract

1 Background Use of antibiotics for animals in the Netherlands has reduced considerably over the last 5 years. This reduction is the result of a change in policy towards the use of antibiotics in veterinary practice and is characterized by a series of coherent political decisions which changed the playing field for farmers and veterinarians considerably. In the years before the reducing trend in use of antibiotics started off, the Netherlands was a relative high consumer of antibiotics in veterinary practice. The trends in antibiotic use will be explored in this paper, in particular focussing on the reducing trends in recent years, and the measures which led to the strong reducing trend which can be observed over a period of more than 3 years now. 2 The years of high use of antibiotics in livestock production

Highlights

Use of antibiotics for animals in the Netherlands has reduced considerably over the last 5 years
Antibiotic use in animals in the Netherlands is measured as sales data since 1999 by the Association of Veterinary Pharmacy in the Netherlands (FIDIN) (Anonymous 2013)
The control on prudent antibiotic use was insufficient until 2008. Based on these sales data, the European Surveillance of Antibiotic Use working group (ESVAC) of the European Medicine Agency in London reported in 2012 that in the Netherlands most antibiotics were used per kg live weight produced (Grave et al 2012)

Summary

Background

Use of antibiotics for animals in the Netherlands has reduced considerably over the last 5 years. The trends in antibiotic use will be explored in this paper, in particular focussing on the reducing trends in recent years, and the measures which led to the strong reducing trend which can be observed over a period of more than 3 years now. The trends in antibiotic use will be explored in this paper, in particular focussing on the reducing trends in recent years, and the measures which led to the strong reducing trend which can be observed over a period of more than 3 years The authors are the former and present chair of the expert panel of the Netherlands Veterinary Medicine Authority (SDa). Mevius Department of Infectious Diseases and Immunology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

The years of high use of antibiotics in livestock production

Prudent use of antibiotics in human medicine in the Netherlands

Findings

Reducing the use of antimicrobials in veterinary practice