Farmers will be in a far more “precarious position” when it comes to accessing veterinary medicines because of the government’s proposed vet medicines and fertilisers bill, an Independent TD has warned.
Cork South West TD, Michael Collins, believes the Veterinary Medicinal Products, Medicated Feed and Fertilisers Regulation Bill 2023 will ultimately “drive up prices” for famers and also threaten the viability of licenced merchants to compete within the veterinary medicine sector.
Deputy Collins said the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, had promoted the bill as “the end point of a collaboration and engagement with stakeholders such as agri-merchants and veterinary pharmacists.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Deputy Collins said.
“When my colleagues and I on the Oireachtas Agriculture Committee extensively examined this bill during our debates we found that there were a number of fairer and more pragmatic options available to the minister than the ones he has chosen to prioritise in this bill.
“We made those explicitly clear in the substantial report we published on the matter. For all intents and purposes that report has been ignored by the department,” he said.
Minister McConalogue has said the bill seeks to “modernise the area of veterinary medicines and medicated feed” and will also establish “a national fertiliser database which will collect data on import, sale, supply and use of fertilisers”.
But Deputy Collins argues that the net result of the bill could make it harder for farmers to access veterinary medicines because of the “acute lack of available vets in many rural and peripheral areas”.
“Farmers will lose the local connection to trusted agri-merchants,” he warned.
“Farmers will lose ease of access, and they will lose money when the price for a prescription goes through the roof because of the virtual monopoly that this bill creates for the vets as sole legal prescribers.
“I am calling on the minister to press the pause button on this bill. I am calling on him to go back and look again at what will actually work for farmers and agri-merchants,” Deputy Collins said.
Meanwhile, Independent TD for Kerry, Danny Healy-Rae, also warned that the proposed bill will have “very serious implications for farmers, and especially small farmers in rural Ireland, predominantly in the west”.
And Independent TD for Tipperary Michael Lowry said the bill suggested that “farmers are incapable of caring for their animals”.
“It implies that the years of successful experience that farmers have in this area cannot be trusted,” he said.
“Equally, it suggests that the co-ops have not been upholding their area of responsibility. Neither of these implications is sustained by facts,” Deputy Lowry added.
Independent TD for Kerry, Michael Healy-Rae, also accused Minister McConalogue of “attacking a system that was working perfectly well” and “potentially increasing the cost of the goods”.