EU exempts some medicines from prescription-only provision

CERTAIN veterinary medicines for food- producing animals are to be exempted from the general legal requirement that they be supplied only on prescription.

A decision on the criteria taken by the EU Veterinary Pharmaceutical Committee was welcomed by both Agriculture Minister Mary Coughlan and the farm lobby.

The relevant EU Directive included a provision that these medicines should only be supplied on the basis of a veterinary prescription, unless exempted. The EU has now adopted the exemption criteria.

Ms Coughlan said farmers will get exempted medicines on the same basis as at present and it will not now be necessary to amend the existing regulations to extend the range of prescribers.

She said the regulations, which she signed into law last November, included new provisions to minimise costs to farmers and to foster competition in the supply of medicines.

These include the removal of the mandatory farm visits by vets prior to writing a prescription, the extension of the life of a prescription from 31 days to six months and the requirement that vets must issue a written prescription and indicate at least two products where a suitable alternative was available.

Ms Coughlan said intramammaries will become prescription-only on January 1, 2007. Her department was consulting with relevant stakeholders in relation to appropriate prescribing arrangements for this category.

Irish Co-operative Organisation Society president Padraig Gibbons said the EU exemption decision will allow co-ops to continue to sell the current list of licensed merchant medicines without a prescription.

Irish Farmers’ Association president Padraig Walshe welcomed the minister’s statement that farmers will continue to get medicines on the same basis as at present and that there will be no re-classification of medicines to prescription-only. He said he had requested an urgent meeting with the minister to get a sensible and workable system in place for prescribing intramammaries from January 1, 2007.

Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association dairy committee chairman Dominic Cronin said the EU exemption decision will maintain the status quo and spare farmers extra red tape and costs.