Type of indicator

Environment

Indicator C47

Indicator I.26 Limiting antimicrobials use in farmed animals: 

Sales/use of antimicrobials in food producing animals  

Definition 

This indicator refers to action to improve the response of EU agriculture to societal demands on food and public health such as fighting antimicrobial resistance (AMR), promoting production of safe, nutritious and sustainable food, as well as animal welfare.

  • Data available per calendar year for any given year by MS [1]
  • Provided by total sales of veterinary medicinal products containing antimicrobial substances 
  • Per species of food-producing animals 

Unit of measurement

Sales of antimicrobial substances, (product package level), corrected by a Population Correction Unit (PCU)*. 

Data source

European Surveillance of Veterinary Antimicrobial Consumption (ESVAC) project, started by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) upon a request from the EC in 2009 to develop a harmonised approach for the collection and reporting of data on the use of antimicrobial agents in animals from EU Member States.
 Data is collected on a voluntary basis on sales of antimicrobial veterinary medicinal products (VMP) at package level from the EU Member States (MSs), EEA countries and Switzerland.

References / location of the data

Data collection / dissemination level

EU, National (NUTS 0), European Economic Area (EEA) 

Frequency

Annual, from 2010 onwards

Timeliness

2 years

Comments/caveats
  • The data on sales of veterinary antimicrobials for food-producing animals should not be used for direct comparison between countries without considering differences in national contexts; and changes observed over time for certain countries should be interpreted with caution. More information can be found in the latest ESVAC report  from which this data is extracted.
  • One of the three pillars of the new European One Health Action Plan against AMR (2017) includes as key objective making the EU a best practice region in the fight against AMR, consolidating surveillance of AMR and antimicrobial consumption.
  • Long term objective is the responsible and prudent use of antimicrobials (prevention/reduction)
  • Stratification factors are used to calculate use data from the sales data according to target species for the different VMPs with more than one target specie; this is a pilot project within 5 MS, to be developed in the future. 
  • Once the new Regulation on veterinary medicinal products is to be applied (beginning 2022), all MS are obliged to start collecting data on sales and use of antimicrobials at farm level[2] in a stepwise approach for different species.[3] 

 

* Population correction unit (PCU): the amounts of veterinary antimicrobial agents sold in the different countries are normalised by the animal population that could potentially be treated with antimicrobials in each country. The PCU has been established as a denominator for the sales data. The data sources used and the methodology for the calculation of the PCU are comprehensively described in Appendix 2 of the Agency’s report ‘Trends in the sales of veterinary antimicrobial agents in nine European countries: 2005-2009’ (EMA/238630/2011) 17. Animal categories included in the calculation of the PCU and the weights used to calculate the PCU are described in Annex 3 of this report. It must be emphasised that the PCU is purely a surrogate for the animal population that could potentially be treated.

[1] Malta did not contribute to the recent published data till 2017, ESVAC is till now a voluntary project 

[2] Article 57 in New Veterinary Medicinal Product Regulation: "Member States shall collect relevant and comparable data on the volume of sales and the use of antimicrobial medicinal products used in animals, to enable in particular the direct or indirect evaluation of the use of such products in food-producing animals at farm level …"

[3] Article in New Veterinary Medicinal Product Regulation: „Member States shall be allowed to apply a progressive stepwise approach regarding the obligations set out in this Article.”