Organic livestock are primarily supplied by organically produced feed and ruminants are mainly fed forages. Organic production promotes high animal welfare standards, in particular by meeting the species-specific behavioural needs of animals. All these aspects contribute to a preventive approach that limits the use of external inputs in livestock production, either be it for animal health or nutrition. The RELACS project aims at developing alternative products and tools to reduce the use of contentious inputs in livestock production, namely anthelmintics, antibiotics and vitamins. Two complementary techniques acting on different stage in the worm life cycle have been tested as alternatives to anthelmintics. For antibiotics, RELACS aimed to adapt preventive herd health management tools to local conditions and to develop new options for mastitis treatment using essential oils. Finally, two strategies to reduce use of B and E vitamins in livestock production have been explored in RELACS: updating data on vitamin requirements and developing competitive non-GM high-yield yeast production strains. The results of RELACS on these alternatives were presented to relevant stakeholders of the organic sector and to EU policymakers, in order to assess their acceptability of the alternatives and to identify under which conditions they could be adopted. This multi-actor approach and fact-based dialogue allowed to develop a “European roadmap to reduce contentious inputs in organic livestock production”, with the aim to propose fair, reliable and implementable rules to achieve an identified realistic reduction pathway of anthelmintics, antibiotics, and vitamins. The results of the RELACS project show that reducing the use of anthelmintics is a possible future, under several conditions. The two alternatives evaluated present a lot of potential but should not be seen as new veterinary drugs that will strictly replace anthelmintics. As for antibiotics, it is not possible to envisage a phasing out in organic farming in the current state of knowledge, but preventive herd health management tools show a good potential to reduce their use in the short term. In the medium-term, antibiotic reduction strategies could be complemented by the use of essential oils or other herbal veterinary medicinal products. In both cases, a holistic strategy should be adopted, where immune response and nutrition will help towards achieving control of parasites and diseases.