Reduction of antibiotic use in animals "let's go Dutch".

Use of antibiotics for animals in the Netherlands has reduced considerably over the last 5 years. This reduction is the result of a change in policy towards the use of antibiotics in veterinary practice and is characterized by a series of coherent political decisions which changed the playing field for farmers and veterinarians considerably. In the years before the reducing trend in use of antibiotics started off, the Netherlands was a relative high consumer of antibiotics in veterinary practice. The trends in antibiotic use will be explored in this paper, in particular focussing on the reducing trends in recent years, and the measures which led to the strong reducing trend which can be observed over a period of more than 3 years now.