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Since 1994, vets in Denmark have not been allowed to sell antibiotics directly to farmers.
The rule was brought in to help stop the spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) through the blanket preventative use of antibiotics on farm animals.
Vet Poul Baekbo of Seges, the advisory and research organisation of Danish farmers, said that “from one day to another, half of vets’ income was removed.”
However, with increased consumer awareness of AMR and animal welfare, Baekbo pointed out that Denmark had consistently managed to decrease its dependence on antibiotics.
Between 2015 and 2018, the country had succeeded in reducing antibiotic usage by almost 15%.
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He added, however, that in 1994 some vets found it extremely hard to survive without the sale of antibiotics.
The government attempted to mitigate the financial impact on vets by insisting that each farm had six to 12 consultation visits a year to help develop a one-to-one relationship between farmer and vet.
Now the system in operation in Denmark means that vets can only prescribe a medicine and the farmer must buy it directly from a pharmacy.
A prescription for any one animal must be used within 35 days of being issued and is reminiscent of a new regulation brought in by the Veterinary Council of Ireland, which states that farmers should have been visited by a vet within 30 days of having a prescription issued.
VetStat
The pharmacy dispensing an animal medicine to a farm must provide information on the medicine quantity, name of the farmer and animal identification code along with other pieces of information to a database called VetStat.
It means that there is an up-to-date record of every antibiotic prescribed to each farm in Denmark.
In the interest of transparency, Baekbo said that anyone can then apply to access VetStat and see how much antibiotics any one farmer is using.
The move could be seen as invasive, and some concerns have been raised about large pharmaceutical companies having access to the register.
The tighter rules around antibiotic usage and monitoring on Danish farms might also be indicative of what might come into force across Europe in 2021, with the recent adoption of stricter controls around animal antibiotics by the European Commission.
To reduce further will be much more challenging
The country also operates a yellow card system, which limits the amount of antibiotics each farm can use per day.
For example, on a Danish pig farm only up to 20% of the young pigs can be treated with antibiotics per day.
Baekbo said that since the yellow card system has come in place in 2011, not a single farmer had received a red card and been investigated for overuse of antibiotics.
With increased consumer awareness around antibiotics, the pressure is on to continue reducing antibiotic usage, but Baekbo said that this would be potentially difficult.
“Now it becomes more and more difficult because we are already on a very low use of antibiotics, so even to reduce further will be much more challenging,” Baekbo concluded.
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