Are Veterinarians Overprescribing Antibiotics?

Morning Edition looks at whether veterinarians help encourage farmers to overuse antibiotics.  The whole story is worth reading, but I found this part interesting:

Pork producers rely heavily on veterinarians like Henry for advice. "They don't want to spend money on drugs if they don't need to," says Henry. "Now, you have to juxtapose that with a tremendous amount of pressure from pharmaceutical companies to move product."
Those companies aim advertising campaigns at farmers and veterinarians alike. Henry says he dismisses it, but others are influenced. As a result, farmers sometimes use more drugs than they should.
In addition, many veterinarians have a financial interest in such decisions. They resell antibiotics to farmers.
"There's some margin in there for the veterinarian, so there's some incentive for the veterinarians to sell more," says Henry.
In Denmark, the government took away that incentive in 1994; it stopped veterinarians from earning profits on such sales. The next year, antibiotic use by almost 25 percent. (The Danish government also banned sales of one antibiotic that year, which may account for part of the decline.) Since then, Denmark has passed other regulations limiting antibiotic use in agriculture.
But Henry says he still trusts veterinarians, more than any regulations by government, to make sure antibiotics are used wisely.

Overuse of antibiotics, along with manure management and animal welfare are going to be the biggest issues for animal agriculture going forward.  I would anticipate that having to cut back on antibiotic use will end up challenging standard confinement practices as much as, if not more than PETA and HSUS do.