Correction updates authorship on dairy antibiotic cost study: full analysis
A Frontiers in Veterinary Science correction has updated the authorship of a recent dairy antimicrobial economics paper, adding Attila Dobos to the article “Economic costs of veterinary drug and antibiotic use in commercial dairy cattle herds in Central European countries.” The correction, accepted May 6, 2026, revises the author contributions statement and notes that the original article has been updated, while leaving the conflict of interest statement unchanged. (frontiersin.org)
The original study was published on January 7, 2026, and examined 2019 veterinary drug expenditures in 20 commercial Holstein-Friesian dairy herds totaling 18,653 cows across five Central European countries: Czechia, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Its central finding was that antibiotics represented the largest share of veterinary drug costs, ahead of hormones, surgical and medical products, vaccines, vitamins and supplements, and antiparasitics. (frontiersin.org)
The paper estimated average veterinary drug costs at €63.3 per cow, with country-level averages ranging from €29.0 in Czechia to €99.0 in Slovenia. Antibiotics accounted for 40.8% of total drug costs, or €25.8 per cow, and 60.0% of antibiotic costs were tied to mastitis treatment. Cephalosporins alone represented 43.7% of total antibiotic costs, with combination products and penicillins following behind. The authors said the findings point to mastitis management as the main driver of antibiotic expenditures in these herds, while also showing meaningful variation between farms. (frontiersin.org)
The correction itself is narrow. Frontiers says the author contributions statement now credits László Ózsvári with roles including conceptualization, methodology, supervision, and funding acquisition; Attila Dobos with conceptualization, validation, investigation, and review/editing; and Marietta Máté with conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, data curation, visualization, and drafting and editing support. In other words, the journal corrected attribution, not the data, methods, or conclusions. (frontiersin.org)
There does not appear to be broad outside reaction to the correction itself, which is typical for authorship amendments. But the paper lands in a policy environment where antimicrobial use in food animals is under closer scrutiny across Europe. Under EU Regulation 2019/6, antimicrobial prophylaxis is restricted to exceptional cases and limited circumstances, and the European Medicines Agency has said annual reporting of antimicrobial sales and use data is now producing more granular surveillance for cattle and other food-producing species. (eur-lex.europa.eu)
Why it matters: For veterinarians working with dairy herds, the more important takeaway is the unchanged substance of the original paper. The study reinforces how much antibiotic costs, particularly mastitis therapies, shape overall herd medicine spending. That matters not just for budgets, but for stewardship conversations with producers, treatment protocols, selective use strategies, diagnostics, and benchmarking. It also stands out that cephalosporins made up the largest share of antibiotic costs in the dataset, because those drugs sit inside a broader European framework that increasingly emphasizes responsible use of antimicrobials considered important to human medicine. (frontiersin.org)
The findings also fit a larger trend. EMA says Europe’s surveillance system has shifted from the earlier ESVAC project to the newer ESUAvet framework, with mandatory country reporting and more detailed use data. That means studies like this one, even though based on 2019 herd records and convenience sampling, can help fill in the farm-level economic context behind top-line surveillance numbers. For clinicians and advisers, that’s useful when discussing where prevention, diagnostics, vaccination, culling decisions, housing, and mastitis control may reduce both disease burden and antimicrobial pressure. (frontiersin.org)
What to watch: The next question is whether follow-on research updates these cost patterns with more recent post-2022 data, especially under the current EU regulatory framework, and whether mastitis-focused stewardship efforts change the balance of antibiotic classes used in commercial dairy herds. (eur-lex.europa.eu)