Rational use of drugs in veterinary medicine and food safety.

Rational use of drugs in veterinary medicine has manifold importance. Using drugs, only when they are really necessary (indicated), in the right dose and route of administration, the potential harm from their use would be reduced and efficiency increased, and the risk of development of resistant microorganisms (when are used antimicrobials) would be significantly reduced. All of this becomes more important when these drugs are used in food-producing animals. Simultaneously with the intensification of livestock rearing and the exceptional increase in the productivity of animals, the number of used drugs unavoidably increases. There is no almost any animal today, regardless of breeding system (intensive or extensive), which is not received at least one drug during their life cycle. In the breeding of poultry, cattle and pigs as the main sectors for the production of foods of animal origin, the use of drugs has increased up to limits that can be considered as alarming to human health. On the first place are antibiotics or antimicrobial drugs that are used very often for the treatment or prevention of bacterial diseases, and often as stimulators of growth. Besides antibiotics, many other drugs are used, with evident numerous harmful effects, even with carcinogenic and teratogenic features, whose residues in groceries intended for human feed, can seriously endangered the health of people, as potential consumers of this kind of food. Therefore, the significance of control of the use of the antimicrobial, and other drugs in these animals is exceptionally high.