Animal medicines must not be prescription only, says group
The seminar was told there would be much greater benefit to consumer safety from uniformly enforcing existing regulations on farm record keeping, training and publication of residue test results.
Frank Hughes, chairman, reiterated APHA’s opposition to the EU proposal that all medicines intended for food producing animals be available only under prescription.
He said that this approach is bureaucracy gone mad and if implemented would be counterproductive for consumers, animal welfare, Irish farmers and the Irish animal health industry.
“We firmly support measures designed to safeguard public health. These measures include the establishment of maximum residue limits, treatment withdrawal periods and residue analytical methods.”
Mr Hughes said that control of livestock treatments is further ensured by classifying veterinary medicines according to rational criteria, record keeping by retailers and farmers and controlled product distribution, either via the vet or from licensed retailers.
“However, we are firmly against the proposal that all veterinary medicinal products for food-producing species should be prescription only medicines,” he said.
The APHA chairman said if it is not necessary to obtain a prescription for headache tablets or cough medicine for humans, or for the treatment of fleas and worms in dogs or cats, the same logic should apply to the treatment of lice or liverfluke for example.
To create an unnecessary monopoly for all farm animal medicines might increase the cost of simple management products as competition is removed.
This might be a barrier to the actual treatment of the animal. The proposal would risk animal welfare by potentially increasing the cost of treatment for routine disease prevention.
Mr Hughes reported that some progress has been made as the agriculture and industry committees within the European Parliament have rejected the proposal.
