Comparison with the Human Pharmaceutical Industry

The human and veterinary pharmaceutical industries share many close scientific links. This has encouraged regulators to impose similar regulatory requirements on the two sectors, and most of the legislation governing the European animal health industry is modeled on rules developed for its human pharmaceutical counterpart. The financial resources available to those two industries – and their ability to bear such a regulatory burden- are significantly different, however.

For example:

• At more than US $ 550,000 million, global sales of human drugs are some 40-times higher than those of veterinary medicines. The value of the world animal health market in 2004 represented approximately 2.5% of the world human pharmaceutical market. (Source EFPIA, 2005)
• In Western Europe the animal health market in 2003 representeds approximately 3.13.3% of the human medicines market in 2004.
• Revenues generated by only one of the world's best-selling human medicines are equivalent in value to around three-quarters of the entire world market for animal health products.

October 2005