The annual conference of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's Agricultural and Veterinary Pharmacists Group was held in Milton Keynes on November 6 and 7. Steven Kayne reports
Mr Dai Thomas (head of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's animal medicines division) addressed participants on the distance selling of animal medicines, a topic on which members of the group had expressed considerable concern recently. The practice had grown because of the emergence of significant cross-border price differentials that could be exploited with ease through internet sales.
Convenience was also an important factor. Mr Thomas said that there was no doubt about the speed with which e-commerce was expanding and, like it or not, pharmacists would have to become involved if they wanted to grow their veterinary business. Interestingly, most items offered for sale on the internet were through retailers, rather than through manufacturers or wholesalers.
Mr Thomas pointed out that under the Code of Ethics Section 1:13 a pharmacist must not normally distribute or encourage the distribution of any medicinal product by mail order. However, in order not to place pharmacists at a disadvantage when compared with merchants or saddlers, the provision did not apply to animal medicines. He reminded colleagues that the new draft Code of Ethics did not contain such exemption and suggested that representations should be made on this point without delay.
Mr Thomas emphasised that it was particularly important to get the regulations concerning distance selling of PML right, because otherwise there was a distinct possibility that the EU authorities could effectively eliminate this class of medicines by making them available only on a veterinary prescription. Most EU states had only two categories of drugs, effectively POM and GSL with some variations and exemptions and Britain could be forced to join them if it did not make appropriate representations.
PML medicines could theoretically be sold on self selection, but new regulations meant that sales must be supervised, posing some operational difficulties at the point of sale. In most pharmacies supervision could only really be assured by treating PML medicines as pharmacy only (P) items and taking them off self selection. One problem was ensuring that the medicine being bought was for the customer's own animals, ie, that there was no onward sale. Customers who made false declarations about their intentions could conceivably circumvent the regulations. Under these circumstances the seller could still be prosecuted but there would be mitigating circumstances.
Mr Thomas went on to illustrate how the PML regulations could be satisfied using the example of a company called National Milk Records. The company had a national team of milk record auditors who visited farms once a month to check individual cows' milk yields.
During that time the company had the opportunity to drop off literature and discuss internet sales with farmers. NMR had set up a subsidiary called Farmexpress, registered as an agricultural merchant. It did not hold stock itself but supplied in conjunction with a wholesaler. NMR had telephone sales operators who took orders from customers identified by farm number from its computer screens, sent the orders (via a suitably qualified person for authorisation) to their wholesaler for action. This process was perfectly legal.
Imports of prescription only products by distance buying were lawful providing the product had a UK marketing authorisation. The conditions in the exporting country applied to the sale, but varying systems of categorisation in different countries caused difficulties. Further, there was also the problem of virus types. An American virus would protect against strains of virus different from a European variant.
Ireland provided a source for many sales. An initial advantage of 20 per cent in price was compounded by the fact that export sales did not attract VAT, increasing the savings to more than 40 per cent. Harmonisation of pricing structure between the two countries should be considered.
Far from being an unfair advantage, distance selling did provide an opportunity for pharmacy, Mr Thomas said.
In the discussion that followed Mr Douglas Davidson (Blairgowrie) highlighted the problem of drug recalls. What would happen if a batch was found to be faulty and a cross border distance sale was involved, he asked. It was agreed that the responsibility should fall to the retailer.