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ACVM Group Overview

The Agricultural Compounds & Veterinary Medicines (ACVM) Group is responsible for the registration of agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines, and monitoring their importation, manufacture, sale and use.

The Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines (ACVM) Act (1997) is part of the wider reform of agricultural legislation agreed by Government in the late 1980s. It controls the agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines used in association with animals and plants, and is a companion measure to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HSNO) Act 1996, the Animal Products Act (1999), the Dairy Industry Act (1952) (since repealed), the Food Act (1981), the Animal Welfare Act (1999) and the Biosecurity Act (1993). The ACVM Act replaces the Animal Remedies Act 1967, the Stock Foods Act 1946, the Fertilisers Acts 1960 and 1982, and together with the HSNO Act (1996), the Pesticides Act 1979.

Under the legislation, the Director-General of Agriculture and Forestry is the decision maker responsible for administering the ACVM Act.

The ACVM group is focused around three core functions and teams:

• Standards & Conformance
• Approvals
• Executive Management

The key outputs of the "front-line" functional teams are:

Standards and Conformance

• to produce the standards (rules) by which products will be exempt registration, assessed and registered, and their importation, manufacture, sale and use monitored in consultation with internal and external interested parties;
• to provide technical advice and support;
• to influence international initiatives to harmonize requirements for assessment and registration;
• to approve and audit people and processes;
• to verify compliance with exemption or registration conditions and enforce the law as appropriate.

Approvals

• to assess/audit applications for registration of agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines in accordance with standards set by the Standards and Conformance team, and defined delivery specifications for quality, quantity, timeliness and cost;
• to provide inputs to the Standards and Conformance outputs as required.