13.11.2015

The European Surveillance of Veterinary Antimicrobial Consumption (ESVAC) project collects information on how antimicrobial medicines are used in animals across the European Union (EU). This type of information is essential to identify possible risk factors that could lead to the development and spread of antimicrobial resistance in animals. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) started this project in April 2010 following a request from the European Commission for the Agency to develop a harmonised approach for the collection and reporting of data on the use of antimicrobial agents in animals from EU and European Economic Area (EEA) Member States. EMA publishes an annual report on the sales of veterinary antibiotics. The latest report, published in October 2015, shows that sales of antibiotics for use in animals in Europe fell by approximately 8% between 2011 and 2013.
According to Member States, the factors that may have contributed to the decline include responsible-use campaigns, increased awareness of the threat of antimicrobial resistance, restrictions of use and targets and changes in animal demographics. The ESVAC project has grown from reporting data from nine countries for its first report covering 2005-2009 to 26 countries from the European Economic Area for its 2013 report. These countries account for approximately 95% of the food-producing animal population in the region.Of the overall sales in the 26 countries in 2013, the largest proportions, expressed as mg/PCU, were accounted for by tetracyclines (36.7%), penicillins (24.5%) and sulfonamides (9.6%). For the antimicrobial classes belonging to the World Health Organization (WHO) list of critically important antimicrobials (CIAs) with highest priority in human medicine, namely 3rd- and 4th-generation cephalosporins, fluoroquinolones and macrolides, the sales for food-producing animals, including horses, accounted for 0.17%, 1.87% and 7.37%, respectively, of the total sales in the 26 countries in 2013.