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AgVetLink: Number 65, December 2007

Advertising of TNPs with Restricted Sale Condition

The ACVM Standard for Prescription Animal Remedy Veterinary Medicines states that, as a basic principle, a trader should focus any advertising or promotion of PAR products to registered veterinarians who can legitimately prescribe these types of products. Traders should provide accurate and technically supportable information about their products that allows prescribing veterinarians to make informed judgements in regard to their use.

Traders can provide technical information on products and foster an awareness and understanding of disease conditions or health and production management options. In doing this, they can identify themselves or their company with the information and that they market the types of products that could be used to treat a particular disease condition or contribute to the management of health or production but they must not list the product name.

They also must not promote the product as the preferred choice and must emphasise that the end users should discuss treatment options with their veterinarian. They must not offer any purchasing incentives to end users or carry out any advertising campaigns targeting end users or face to face contacts with end users to promote particular PAR products. Pricing lists are acceptable in regard to products that do not have the registration condition that prohibits advertising to end users.

When advertising to end users is prohibited

The current standard allows a trader to advertise or promote a PAR product directly to end users when there is no likelihood that this advertising will jeopardise the risk management role of the prescribing veterinarian. The ACVM Group has recognised that this is not a workable regulatory option. In separate communications parties have been advised that the ACVM Group will, when necessary, impose a condition of registration on each product, specifically prohibiting advertising to end users when it considers that this practice may jeopardise the risk management role. This condition applies to certain PAR I products (antibiotics and anabolic steroids) and all PAR II products. If the Group has missed putting this condition on a specific product, then no regulatory action will be taken against advertising until the oversight has been addressed.