The Department of Agriculture is examining the option of breaking the link between prescribing and dispensing veterinary medicines in the implementation of a new EU directive which will place restrictions on the sale of certain products.
From January 2022, the new laws will require farmers to get prescription from vets to use antiparasitics (eg doses for treating worms/liver fluke) for livestock.
Currently, hundreds of trained ‘Responsible Persons’ provide a similar farm drug supply service to farmers at more than 900 licensed merchant and co-op stores and 300 pharmacies nationwide.
Speaking at a recent Oireachtas Agriculture Committee meeting on the topic, the Department’s Colm Forde said: “If all of these medicines are now going to require a prescription, the best way of ensuring a competitive supply chain is to break the link between prescribing and dispensing.
Mike designed the shed with a 20ft passage to allow easy access when feeding I m down to 13 suckler cows. I do like them, but I d say in the next few years I will be out of them. I just don t have time to be watching them calving. You have to be there. It s only potluck really that they are calving ok. It s all about keeping the system simple here, he says.
Mike buys in about 80 store heifers between March and August, finishing them to beef, as well as finishing about 60-70 bulls.
He buys mostly Charolais and Limousin bred cattle, explaining that while he doesn t buy “the real fancy ones”, he likes “something that will go on”.