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Recent Meetings

VICH
The first VICH (the International Co-operation on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for the Registration of Veterinary Medicinal Products) conference was held in Brussels from 16 to 19 November.

The conference was held in conjunction with meetings of the various working groups and the Steering Group (made up of industry and regulatory representatives from the United States, Japan and the European Union – with Australia and New Zealand having an ‘active’ observer status). Most of the conference time was used for working group presentations of the completed guidelines and the work in progress.

Brian Pidford is a member of the Good Clinical Practices Working Group and John Reeve is a member of the Food Safety (Toxicology) Working Group. Because the GCP Group has almost finished its task, Brian will become the ANZ member on the Pharmacovigilance Working Group in place of Peter Scott from Australia.

AVCARE Seminar in Australia
Debbie Morris, Director of the ACVM Group, was invited to attend an AVCARE seminar held in Sydney, 30 November 1999, on Environmental Hurdles for Pesticides beyond Y2K. Presentations were given by Dr Donald Hannah (ERMA New Zealand), Dr Jack Holland (Environment Australia), the National Registration Authority and the NSW State Environment Protection Authority. The meeting raised questions highlighting the need for clarification of the relationship between the HSNO and ACVM Acts and between the current and future legislative environments.

ANZ VICH management group/ANZ Reigistration Management Committee
Following the meeting in Sydney, there was a meeting of the ANZ VICH management group in Canberra, which was attended by Dr Donald Hannah (ERMA New Zealand) and Debbie Morris. There will be a VICH Working Group formed on pre-registration requirements for antibiotic resistance. It was agreed that the Australian NRA will provide the expert representative for the working group, and that Dr Jonathan Taylor from New Zealand will be the peer reviewer.

There was no formal meeting of the ANZ registration management committee; many of the harmonisation issues cannot be progressed until the ERMA position is clarified. However, we did agree that there would be a meeting in New Zealand in July 2000 to revisit the work programme. In the interim the ACVM Group will look at the New Zealand and Australian registration requirements to identify differences and try to resolve them. The ERMA standards will be added as soon as possible.

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