New changes to veterinary medicine rules have drawn fire from both the Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) and Veterinary Ireland (VI), but these groups have criticised the changes from different angles.

The IFA claims that the new regulations represent a “missed opportunity” on broadening the supply base for vaccines currently exempt from prescriptions, while VI argues that the new system could thwart efforts to prevent anthelminthic resistance.

The two groups were responding to Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue’s announcement on Thursday that he had signed a statutory instrument which will see all wormers requiring a prescription written by a vet in future.

The Minister stated that the instrument had been crafted in a way which struck the balance between the “veterinary expertise” needed to prescribe a wormer and farmers’ access to them through various supply channels.

IFA animal health chair TJ Maher said vaccines currently classed as exempt from prescriptions should have remained available from co-ops and licensed agri merchants after the rule change.

Maher argued that this would have allowed for competition in the market for “key management tools for farmers”.

While the IFA chair did not move to welcome the new rule's provisions to allow merchants and co-ops to continue selling wormers when they are prescribed, he did suggest that some of the concerns with making wormers prescription-only medicines had been addressed by the Minister.

Vet concerns

Meanwhile, VI has said that the new rules have undermined vets’ ability to address the growing challenge of antiparasitic resistance, as they will allow for a “proper assessment protocol” for prescribing wormers.

The vet group claims that this protocol has “downgraded the prescribing of antiparasitic veterinary medicines in order to address a perceived commercial issue”.

It argued that the prescribing of a wormer by a vet employed by a co-op or merchant could raise issues for the provision of 24-hour animal care.

“The proper assessment protocol does not require the provision of 24-hour cover in the traditional sense where the client’s vet is available to treat animals 24/7 365 days a year,” VI president Hazell Mullins said.

“Under these regulations, the prescribing vet who has no knowledge of the farm will only have to provide cover for an adverse reaction to the treatment prescribed.”