The Dutch government is celebrating news that a drive to reduce the amount of antibiotics used in farming is exceeding targets. Farmers in the Netherlands achieved greater than anticipated reductions in antibiotics use in just two years, figures released by agricultural research agency LEI Wageningen UR reveal.

Farmers surpassed their initial target of a 20 per cent reduction between 2009 and 2011. LEI Wageningen UR welcomed the news and said the reduction has implications for public health, as the risk of antibiotic resistance will decrease with falling prophylactic antibiotic use.

The LEI Wageningen UR figures showed that in the pig and broiler sector, the use of antibiotics has declined considerably, although the veal calf sector showed a lower than 20 decline and use in the dairy sector remains the same.

The researchers revealed over 50 per cent of all the randomly selected farms they examined used antibiotics at levels below the targets set for 2011 by the Animal Drug Authority (Autoriteit Diergeneesmiddelen, SDa). Fewer than 10 per cent of the farms studied had usage levels above these levels.

In all, total sales of antibiotics for use in Dutch livestock farming dropped by almost 32 per cent over the past two years, falling from 495 tonnes in 2009 to 338 tonnes in 2011. The 2011 figure is 40 per cent below the all-time high from 2007.

Tweet