A further change to proposed new rules on veterinary medicine sales, which will see merchants and co-ops unable to sell vaccines or anti-parasitics, will have a detrimental impact on these businesses, a merchant has said.

Ollie Ryan of the Independent Licensed Merchants Association (ILMA) said the latest change to the disputed law will “destroy every merchant in the country”.

“This is heading for a monopoly,” he added.

The Irish Farmers Journal understands that the latest draft of the statutory instrument (SI) provides that only licenced veterinary practices or pharmacists will be able to sell vaccines.

Joint statement

A joint statement from the ILMA, the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society (ICOS) and Acorn Independent Merchants said that if the Minister for Agriculture signs the veterinary medicinal products, medicated feed and fertilisers regulation bill as is, it will effectively legislate all licenced merchants out of business.

“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,” it said.

‘Press pause’

The representative bodies added that Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue needs to “press pause on this whole process”.

“All operators need to be able to continue their respective businesses, 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,” it said.