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AgVetLink: Number 67, April 2008

Antibiotic Sales Data

A data base has been developed to enable easy manipulation and retrieval of data as antibiotic sales information from more years becomes available. As we move toward a less ‘hands on’ assessment of data it becomes increasingly important that data is submitted to us in an accurate manner with easily understood units. Simple errors such as reporting the number of tablets or tubes sold in a column headed ‘kilograms’ can result in some interesting antibiotic sales figures!

The reporting forms will be changed in an attempt to prompt the right information. However, it is important that registrants take responsibility for clearly and accurately reporting volumes. As a default we prefer sales to be reported in kilograms or litres of total product where it is practical or by units such as numbers of tablets. Whatever the unit used, it helps us if it is clearly identified and consistent from year to year. We make the conversion to the quantity of active based on the normal label concentration ignoring overages and salts, which are not relevant to the activity.