ICOS, ILMA and Acorn group members has made a joint call for a pausing of plans to sign the Veterinary Medicinal Products, Medicated Feed and Fertilisers Regulation Bill which, if signed as is, will effectively legislate all licenced merchants out of business.

In a joint statement, the merchants said:

“We are very annoyed and frustrated with the Minister and his approach to this legislation. We have constructively interacted with him and his officials over the last three years and worked out a fair and practical approach to enacting the medicinal/veterinary legislation.

“After one fractious meeting with the veterinary profession – who have scare mongered inaccurately about the potential impact on private veterinary practitioners – the statutory instrument has drastically changed over the last 10 days (last two weeks of July).

“The Minister needs to immediately press pause on this whole process as all operators need to be able to continue their respective business, but above all farmers need easy access to and healthy competition for veterinary medicinal products.

“Over 70% of all veterinary medicinal products are currently sold through veterinary channels and the Minister wants to legislate further regulation to increase this even more, effectively handing a monopoly to the veterinary channels.

“Farmers will ultimately be the losers if this goes through as many co-ops, licenced merchants, and Acorn group branches simply won’t be able to continue to retail veterinary/medicinal products.”

Following this, all parties attended a meeting convened by the Department of Agriculture on the issue. At this point, the Statutory Instrument remains unsigned as negotiations continue to reach a satisfactory outcome which does not negatively impact on farmers or merchants.