Veterinary medicines provide significant benefits to society.

• Health and welfare: veterinary medicines are valuable tools for veterinarians, farmers and pet owners to ensure that animals are and remain healthy. They help to reduce pain in animals and, therefore, support their welfare. Animals need medicines too.

• Food safety and public health: veterinary medicines also have a positive impact on food safety and availability and on people’s health. They support the provision of safe animal products - milk, meat and eggs - and protect public health from harmful food-borne pathogens – e.g. salmonella – and also from diseases that are transmissible from animals to people (called ‘zoonoses’) such as rabies.

• Competitiveness: Veterinary medicines support veterinarians and the farming community by providing them with tools to keep animals healthy and ensure their welfare. Good health, in turn, has a positive impact on both the productivity and the efficiency of farming.

Research suggests that if no veterinary medicines were available, the poultry population would have to increase by 20% and cattle by 89% to obtain the same production level as today.