Essential Tools for Health & Wellbeing
For pet owners, veterinarians, and farmers and ranchers, medicines are essential for ensuring animal welfare, preventing diseases from passing between animals and humans, and protecting our food supply.
There are three types of animal medicine: biologics (which are predominately vaccines), pharmaceuticals, and flea and tick medications.
Vaccines
Preventing diseases before they happen
As one of the top tools for keeping animals healthy, vaccines help prevent the need for later treatment, which reduces animal suffering and losses. Vaccines are a safe, proven way to protect animals from diseases like rabies, parvovirus, and E. coli. In turn, this helps protect public health—fewer sick animals and disease outbreaks means a reduced chance of transmitting illnesses from animals to people.
Animal biologics, including vaccines, are reviewed and approved by the USDA Center for Veterinary Biologics.
Pharmaceuticals
Veterinarian tools for healthier animals
Pharmaceuticals help animals live longer, higher quality lives by addressing infections, diabetes, obesity, pain, cancer and age-related diseases. Just as humans rely on doctors to diagnose ailments and prescribe treatments, animals need veterinarians to manage many types of pharmaceutical treatments.
Pharmaceuticals include anti-inflammatory medications, anesthetics, pain medications, antibiotics, and specialized products for managing reproductive, cardiovascular, or metabolic conditions. To ensure effective and safe administration of animal pharmaceuticals, veterinarians and owners have a wide variety of options, including pills, liquids, injections, powders, feed additives, and boluses.
Animal pharmaceuticals are regulated by the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine.
Flea & Tick Medicines
Preventing itchy outbreaks and serious disease
Parasite products help animals defend against pests like fleas, ticks, mites, and heartworms. Fewer parasites among animals provides a halo of protection for humans. Pet medicines prevent outbreaks and infestations that lead to itchy discomfort or more serious diseases like anemia and Lyme disease. Animal owners administer these medicines through pills, medicated collars, spray dips, shampoos, powders, and “spot-on” liquid repellents. This makes it safer for pets to live inside our home, which is especially important in dense areas where animal illnesses can quickly spread. Farmers and ranchers use these medicines to protect food-producing animals, which supports animal well-being and also protects the food supply.
Treatments for external parasites are considered pesticides, which are regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Treatments for intestinal parasites are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The EPA and the FDA work together to ensure these treatments are safe and effective.
Healthy Pets
Keeping our pets healthy keeps us healthy.
The human-animal bond is stronger than ever before, and we naturally care about keeping animals healthy and safe. Nearly 70% of America households have pets – including 192 million dogs and cats – and pet medicines are essential for their care.
Since we share our homes and communities with animals, we must take steps to prevent and treat animal diseases, because illnesses can move between humans and animals.
Cutting-edge treatments for illnesses such as arthritis and diabetes are becoming more common. Furthermore, animal medicines help pet lovers enjoy their companions without the fear of exposure to diseases like rabies or pests like fleas and ticks.
Animal Medicines v. Human Medicines
Unified Purpose: Better Health for All
Animal medicines and human medicines share the same purpose: to prevent disease, address acute and chronic ailments, and improve quality of life. However, there are important similarities and differences between animal and human medicines.
How Animal Medicines are the Same as Human Medicines
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- Administration is Often Under the Direction of a Medical Professional
When humans are sick, doctors suggest or prescribe treatments, and animals are no different. Veterinarians oversee animal wellness, administer vaccines to prevent illnesses, and prescribe medicines to address infections and diseases like arthritis or cancer. - Regulatory Oversight
Before they can be manufactured or marketed, animal medicines are subject to the same rigorous approval processes as human medicines. Once approved, animal medicines remain heavily regulated by the FDA, USDA, and EPA to protect animals, humans, and the environment. - Must be Used in Accordance with Labels
Federal approval and oversight of animal medicines requires users of those medicines to follow the guidelines on medicine labels. Label instructions are meticulously researched and reviewed during the development and approval process, and they are critical to ensuring safety and optimal treatment. Label instructions include things like which diseases the medicine can treat, how much medicine to use (dosage), and how long to use the medicine.
- Administration is Often Under the Direction of a Medical Professional
How Animal Medicines are Different than Human Medicines
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- Number of Species
Human medicine deals with one species, while veterinary medicine deals with multiple species. Developing medicines for a wide range of species often requires different formulations and types of administration. - Administration
Administering medicine to a turkey isn’t necessarily the same as administering it to a cow. And treating a flock or herd is different than treating a pet dog. The developers of animal medicines must study, test, and account for the many routes of administration of the medicines they produce. - Dosage
Even when treating the same disease, the dosage requirements for animal medicines can vary widely. Inoculating a nine-pound cat for rabies requires a different dosage than inoculating a six-hundred-pound horse. - Market Size
The veterinary medicine market is a fraction of the size of the human medicine market, yet it is subject to the same stringent regulatory processes. - Assessing Benefits & Risks of a Medicine
The quantity and type of data required by government agencies when reviewing a medicine must be proportionate to sector specifics, including the lifespan of the patient. Logically, assessing the benefit-risk of medicine for a human with a life expectancy of 75 years is very different than assessing the benefit-risks of medicine for a broiler chicken, which typically lives only several weeks. The level of investment in researching these differences can have an impact on the costs of medicines. - Who pays for the Medicine?
While the cost of human medicine is typically subsidized by third party payers, animal owners pay the full cost of the medicines they use to treat sick pets or farm animals. - Food Safety & Environmental Impact
To ensure our food is safe to eat and to understand potential impacts on the environment, animal medicines for food-producing animals require extra research and development investment.
- Number of Species