[Antibiotic Use and Reduction in Veterinary Medicine].

After a short history of the development of antimicrobial substances and the initially underestimated resistance problem, the paper describes the method of monitoring the use of antibiotics in food animals at farm level. The resulting benchmarking led to a remarkable reduction of the amount of antibiotics used in animals. However, it is also explained that, apart from reducing the use of antibiotics, the rules for "prudent use" of antibiotics have to be complied with. Concluding, a critical analysis of the effectiveness of the current interpretation of the "critically important antimicrobials for human medicine is discussed.