We must fight to protect UK’s livestock industry

In December 2003, in a Brussels conference room, a piece of innocuous-looking legislation concerning the controls of veterinary medicines was signed by Ministers from all member states of the European Union.

It was only over the proceeding months, when member states got the directive home and started to transpose it into national legislation, that a controversy erupted.

The legislation in question updated the legal framework on veterinary medicines, with a particular focus on the distribution and advertising of drugs used to treat common livestock illnesses such as mastitis, intestinal diseases and pneumonia.

The Directive required all medicines destined for use in food-producing animals to be subjected to a prescription only medicine (POM) regime - a measure accepted by every member country.

The directive also introduced a ban on the advertising of POM medicines to ‘the general public’ - agreed by every member state.

But debate soon sparked over the definition of the ‘general public’. Most member states took ‘the general public’ to include farmers, and that interpretation led to an immediate ban on the advertising of new medicines to farmers across the EU.

But in the UK, the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD), the Defra agency in charge of implementing the new rules in the UK, decided farmers were professionals, and not part of the general public, so advertising these products to UK farmers continued.

That move caused some dismay within the European Commission and now, six years on, the UK is under immense pressure to come in line with the rest of Europe.

Level playing field

A spokesman from the European Commission explained why: “We try to deliver a level playing field for all members of the European Union. We encourage all member states to compete fairly in the market and that means we must all live by the same rules.

“We are worried about the impact to human health of an increased resistance to certain medicines and believe all member states should act as one to tackle the issue.”

He said there may have been ‘some initial concern’ from certain countries over their decision to ban adverts to farmers, but added ‘there has been very little negative feedback on the rules since their inception’.

One hypothesis is that farms on the Continent are, on the whole, a much smaller operation than in the UK. The average beef cattle herd in the UK is 105, against an EU average of 27. The average UK dairy herd is 69, against an EU average of 10.

The UK is also home to 25 per cent of Europe’s sheep population, and the average flock size is bigger than anywhere else in Europe.

France, which traditionally holds great influence in EU negotiations, has relatively small beef and dairy herds, at an average of 46 and 41 respectively, and few sheep. That has been suggested as one reason why France did not have a strong livestock lobby battling the ban on medicinal adverts.

“It is possible the UK stood up to the ban on adverts because the scale of its livestock industry is so much greater than the rest of Europe,” admitted the Commission spokesman.

There was no greater industry fight against the regulations than in Ireland, where farmers were furious at the prospect of being downgraded from ‘professionals’ to the ‘general public’.

The Animal and Plant Health Association (APHA), which represents manufacturers and distributors of veterinary medicines in Ireland, was particularly angry.

“Farmers are an appropriate group of people to be in receipt of advertising relating to veterinary medicines,” APHA argued at the time. It pointed to Council Regulation 1782/2003, part of the Common Agricultural Policy regulations, where a farmer is defined as: ‘a natural or legal person, or a group of natural or legal persons, whatever legal status is granted to the group and its members by national law, whose holding is situated within Community territory, as referred to in Article 299 of the Treaty, and who exercises an agricultural activity’.

“As such, a farmer is not a member of the ‘general public’,” concluded APHA.

Ban enforced

However, Irish Ministers disagreed and a ban on the advertising of veterinary medicines to farmers came into force in 2005.

A spokesman for the Irish Farmers Union, who opposed the advertising ban at the time, said: “We didn’t support it, but the rules are now accepted.”

There is a similar acceptance in Holland. A spokesman from the Dutch farmers’ union - LTO-Nederland - said the legislation ‘went too far’ and that Dutch Ministers should have fought to oppose it. However, he admitted the rules would be ‘impossible to reverse’.

The UK industry, well aware of the difficulty to reverse EU rules once in place, is calling on the VMD to continue to treat farmers as professionals.

Phil Sketchley, chief executive of the National Office for Animal Health (NOAH), said adverts were an important part of farmers’ information armoury against animal disease.

“Farmers are clearly professionals responsible for the production of safe food. They need essential information relating to the health and welfare of animals.”

But he admitted industry lobbyists could score an own goal in the current debate.

“We are one against the rest of Europe. By bringing attention to our opposition to the rules on antimicrobial advertising, we do run the risk of losing our ability to advertise other products too,” he warned.

While that would not stop NOAH from lobbying against the current VMD proposals, he said an EU-wide, root-and-branch review of the directive on veterinary maedicines in 2013 would be an important chance to change the classification of farmers from general public to professionals.

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