
Over the past decade, concerted efforts by Dutch authorities, livestock sectors, and veterinarians have led to a decrease in overall sales and usage of veterinary pharmaceuticals (VPs). However, these trends are unevenly distributed across farms and livestock sectors. Intensive livestock farming in the Netherlands contributes to high manure production and application to soil, increasing the likelihood of VPs entering the environment. Although there is some knowledge about the presence of VPs in various environmental compartments in the Netherlands, the data is limited and not uniformly distributed across the country. Furthermore, information on the origin of these compounds and the impacts of spatially variable conditions on environmental pathways remains largely unknown. Therefore, this thesis aims to investigate the chain of processes leading to the quantification of VPs residues in manure, soil-groundwater, and surface water in the Netherlands.