The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7180 p3-8
5/12 January 2002

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Animal prescriptions give clients choice

Veterinary surgeons should offer written prescriptions to clients, the Government says in an interim response to a review of veterinary dispensing.

The review (PJ, 26 May 2001, p700) said that vets should be required to provide written prescriptions, but the Government has accepted concerns that this might increase consultation charges. Instead it says that prescriptions should be offered and that vets should be able to charge extra for them. This will give clients choice over where medicines are dispensed.

The second of two recommendations of greatest import to pharmacists — reclassifying all animal medicines into three prescriptions classes — has met with a muted response, largely because the matter is reviewed under European Commission proposals. The Government says that if proposals to make all medicines for food producing animals POM are accepted, then the proposed three-tier POM scheme would provide a model that preserved the benefits of Britain's distribution arrangements.

The tiers would be:

1. POM(A), administered by, or under the direct supervision of, vets
2. POM(B), sold or dispensed by vets after clinical examination or by pharmacists on prescription
3. POM(C), all other animal medicines not on the general sale list and sold only by vets, pharmacists or competent agricultural merchants

One recommendation that the Government has indicated it intends to reject concerns the prescribing cascade for animals. European law requires vets to prescribe authorised veterinary medicines and only allows the use of generic, or human, medicines when no authorised animal medicines are marketed. The review team said that vets should be allowed to prescribe generically even when animal medicines were available because they were cheaper.

The interim response is available from the Veterinary Medicines Directorate website (www.vmd.gov.uk) and is open to comment until 29 March 2002.

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