This article is from page 64 of the 2005-11-01 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 64 JPG
FARMERS have received a stay of execution from an EU directive requiring them to have a prescription when obtaining animal medication that previously would have been available over the counter.
Late last week the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mary Coughlan, confirmed that she was finalising new regulations on veterinary medi- cines following consultation with the statutory Animal Remedies Consultative Committee and interested groups. This follows concern in the farming community that the EU directive would lead to huge increases in cost for farmers, who would require a vet for each prescription.
The Minister said that the new regulations will transpose aspects of the EU Medicines Directive while also amending aspects of existing national feat ETBTODee
The EU directive requires that all medicines for food producing animals should require a pre- scription but also contains a mechanism for ex- cluding certain medicines from that requirement. The EU has not yet decided on the medicines that will be granted this exemptions but it must do so
before January | of 2007.
In the interim, existing national prescription arrangements can remain in place. In essence, this means that most medicines currently avail- able without prescription will remain so until the 2007 deadline and farmers can continue to get these medicines in the normal way.
However, intramammaries that contain anti- biotics are highly unlikely to qualifying for ex- emption at EU level and consequently such medi- cines will become subject to prescription. It is hoped that the new deadline will allow further time to finalise arrangements for prescriptions to be written in the context of mastitis control programmes implemented by co-ops and avoid the prescription requirement applying to differ- ent products from varying dates.
‘IT am pleased that the Department has seen sense in holding back on the regulations,” said Clare County Councillor Michael Kelly (FF). “The proposal that only vets could prescribe drugs would add considerably to farmers work when they are already struggling to survive.”
‘Farmers are subject to the most stringent reg- ulations already and I have not seen one shred of evidence of how the proposed new rules would
benefit the quality of our produce. At the same time we allow Brazilian beef into our country ev- enthough foot and mouth is in existence there.”
“However, it 1s essential to treat cows with in- tramammaries at the time of infection,’ he fin- ished.
Meanwhile, because of the temporary suspen- sion of the farm medicine directive the prospect of allowing people other than vets to write pre- scriptions has also been shelved. However, the Minister stated that this option could come back on the table in the future if requires.
A number of measures have also been put in place in an attempt to lower the cost to farm- ers. These include a removal of the requirement for mandatory farm visits by vets prior to writ- ing a prescription, the extension of the life of a prescription from the current 31 days up to six months and the introduction of a new require- ment on vets to issue written prescriptions 1n all or one
In addition, according to the regulations pre- scriptions must now indicate at least two prod- ucts where a suitable alternative was available in order to give farmers more choice as to the appropriate product.