Data included in the veterinary group’s newly published 2025 Antibiotics Stewardship Report shows the use of antibiotics has declined by 33% across all species compared to 2024.
The latest figure reflects a reduction of 60% in the use of antibiotics across all VetPartners’ UK Practices since 2021.
The report has been published to coincide with World Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Awareness Week (November 18 to 24), a global campaign to raise awareness and understanding of AMR and promote best practice.
To effectively reduce AMR across Europe, VetPartners is using cross-country collaboration between its UK and European veterinary practices to help reduce the emergence and spread of drug-resistant infections around the world. As a result of drug resistance, antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents become ineffective and infections become difficult or impossible to treat, increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.
VetPartners’ European Clinical Board is working together across all species groups to protect the use of antibiotics for more critical cases and address the need to take urgent action on AMR.
For the first time, the VetPartners 2025 Antibiotics Stewardship report includes data from Italy as we begin to focus on the challenge of AMR as a group, with practices and associated animal healthcare businesses across the UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands. In coming years, data will be gathered from all of our countries.
Data from the 2025 Antibiotics Stewardship report reveal:
- A reduction of 33% in the use of antibiotics in 2025 across all species compared to 2024 – and a drop of 60% since 2021.
- A 25% reduction in the use of Metronidazole in UK practices since 2021, with some practices completely stopping the use of the antibiotic almost completely in favour of alternative treatments.
- A 50% decrease in the use of Ceftiofur and a 20% reduction in the use of Enrofloxacin in equines since 2021, protecting the use of the antibiotics for more critical cases.
- An increased use of NSAIDS (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) in farm animal practice.
VetPartners Group Director of Clinical Research and Excellence in Practice Dr Rachel Dean believes we are making good progress in our aim to reduce, refine and, where possible, replace antibiotics across the UK and Europe. The Quality Improvement (QI) approach to antibiotics stewardship in practice enables us to review our use and take responsibility for our role in the action against AMR.
Dr Dean said: “As a large group across the UK and Europe, we can influence how antibiotics are used in animal health, and we are doing a really good job. We continue to significantly reduce and progress our use of antibiotics in the UK and we are now working in this area across the whole of the group.
“Antibiotics stewardship isn’t just about using fewer antibiotics, it’s about using progressive and alternative treatments, and making sure we still use antibiotics when and how they are most needed. We’ve had an overall reduction in antibiotics use in the UK and it shows our teams are trying hard to transfer and innovate what they do every day in their decisions, while maintaining great standards of care outcomes for our patients.
“This is an international issue and we are continuing to innovate what we are doing in the UK and support other teams with their antibiotic stewardship to enable them to progress clinical use of antibiotics. As an international group, we are facing the challenge of AMR together.
“From the QI work we’ve done, and continue to do, we can learn what is useful in other countries and also work out what our different needs are. We can learn so much from each other to make a real difference to veterinary healthcare.”
You can read the VetPartners' Antibiotics Stewardship report here.
