Novartis AG, Eli Lilly & Co., Bayer AG and Boehringer Ingelheim are considered likely bidders for these operations, analysts said. The companies are not commenting.
The strong growth in sales of animal drugs reflects animals' increasingly intimate roles in people's lives, said Michael Schaffer author of One Nation Under Dog: Adventures in the New World of Prozac-Popping Puppies, Dog-Park Politics and Organic Pet Food.
"The way we treat pets parallels and shadows the way we treat humans," said Schaffer, a former Inquirer reporter. "For instance, with pharmaceuticals, someone might say, 'My grandmother has a cataract medication. Can you do the same for my dog?' Saying yes to that is a path to great profits because often, a company just has to tweak a drug it already has."
One example: Eli Lilly's Reconcile, a pill to treat the barking and destructive behavior some pets engage in when separated from their owners, is a canine version of the Indianapolis company's antidepressant Prozac.
Not all animal drugs descend from human ones. The vast majority - about 60 percent - of animal-health sales come not from pills for cats and dogs but from vaccines, antibiotics, and other products for the livestock, poultry, and fish that we eat.
But even some of those products have taken on human overtones. The hormones and other chemicals that enlarge livestock and poultry, for example, are known as "performance-enhancers." Can it be long before a chicken is riding in the Tour de France?
Worldwide sales of veterinary health products are expected to hit $43.6 billion in 2014, up from $28.5 billion in 2006, according to market-research firm Kalorama Information Inc.
