Contribution to Agricultural Production

Although they represent only a very small proportion of agricultural input cost (on average less than 2%), animal medicines are crucial to allow European farmers to:

• produce high quality meat and dairy products on an efficient and sustainable basis;
• minimise environmental impact; and
• compete internationally.

Fewer, healthier animals enable the production of greater quantities of food from existing agricultural land with less waste and fewer emissions. A decrease of the use of veterinary medicines would require a larger food animal population to obtain the same production level.

For example, veterinarians believe that in a situation without veterinary medicines, the poultry population would have to increase by 25% and the cattle population by 89% to obtain the same production level as today.
(Source: Prof. Jacques Viaene, Ghent University)

October 2005