Veterinary medicines are not merely therapeutic tools intended for the treatment of animals. In many contexts, they represent a true One Health interface, because each prescribing decision can produce effects that cross the boundaries between animal health, food safety, the environment and public health.
This perspective requires moving beyond an exclusively clinical view of veterinary medicines. Therapeutic efficacy remains an essential criterion, but it must be considered alongside safety for the treated species, protection of non-target animals, residue management, food-chain protection and potential environmental dispersion.
In academic and regulatory settings, the challenge is to train professionals capable of connecting pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, comparative toxicology, epidemiology, microbial ecology and health law. Veterinary medicines thus become a lens through which to observe the complexity of contemporary agro-livestock systems.
The One Health approach does not simply add a rhetorical framework to veterinary pharmacology: it redefines its scope. Every treatment should be interpreted as a technical, health-related, environmental and social act.