Government consults on Veterinary Medicines
3rd Feb 2023 / By Rebecca Veale
The long-awaited consultation on veterinary medicine legislation was published on February 2.
The Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) had been promising this for some time as the EU Veterinary Medicinal Products Regulation was brought in to force in 2019 with implementation over several years. But because this fell outside of the window for adoption into UK law, it was not applicable in the UK.
This has given the VMD the opportunity to be able to look at veterinary medicines legislation and update it to reflect the changes and technical advances in the veterinary medicines industry and future-proof it. Most importantly they’ve been able to look at it through the lens of the UK only.
NPA has been lobbying on this legislation for some time, in Europe when we were still part of the EU, and more recently the VMD directly so they have been aware of our position and the actions our sector takes for the responsible use of medicines when formulating the proposal.
The consultation is a long one and NPA will be working with the Pig Health and Welfare Council Antimicrobial Use group (PHWC AMU) to formulate a response to best reflect the needs of the pig sector.
It is open for anyone to respond but if you’d prefer to share your views with NPA we’d really welcome member engagement – please get in contact with Becca Veale ().
The VMD is also running live Q&A sessions for the various aspects of the consultation. You can find the links to sign up and all the consultation documents here.
The consultation is open for eight weeks and closes on March 31, 2023.