If the UK government and the EU fail to sort out issues around the supply of animal medicines into NI from January 2026, it will have “disastrous” consequences for NI farming, a leading representative from the local dairy sector has said.

Addressing the Oireachtas EU Affairs committee last Wednesday, Patrick Donohoe from Lakeland Dairies outlined how 30% of the co-op’s NI milk pool is processed in the Republic of Ireland (ROI).

That north to south trade in milk is under threat once a three-year grace period around veterinary medicines comes to an end, suggested Donohoe.

This grace period has allowed NI to continue to use veterinary products that are batch tested and come from a registered address in Britain. However, post-Brexit and to comply with EU regulations, veterinary medicines used here will have to be batch-tested in the EU. The costs of that are prohibitive, with up to 51% of products at risk of being discontinued, including important vaccines for the likes of salmonella, leptospirosis and botulism.

The fear among the dairy industry is that rather than stopping using these products, NI farmers will have little option but to continue to source medicines from Britain, even if that is not compliant with EU law.

“If vets in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine are not comfortable with animal medicines used on farms in NI, even though they are the exact same but just not certified, then where does that 30% of product [milk] go?” asked Donohoe.

He said the potential impact would be “huge” and far outweigh the loss of the nitrates derogation in ROI.

“The loss of the veterinary medicines we have today would be like the derogation on steroids,” he said.

Solution

The main solution to future veterinary medicine supply (and wider post-Brexit trade issues) is a UK sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) agreement with the EU that has a section on veterinary medicines. It is a solution pressed for by agri-food organisations in NI and also favoured by the new Labour government.

However, even though Labour has been keen to reset relations with the EU, a veterinary agreement could involve tough political choices, especially if the EU insist that the UK must follow its rules (a concept known as dynamic alignment).

“The EU is not looking for it, but it will entertain a request from the UK Government to engage in negotiations on an SPS veterinary agreement.

“It will be primarily down to the terms and conditions,” suggested Paul Lynam from the British Irish Chamber of Commerce.

He said the British have always struggled with dynamic alignment and it could end up being “a sticking point for British politics”.