Are Restricted Veterinary Medicine price lists advertising and am I allowed to publish them?

Restricted Veterinary Medicines (RVMs) are Agricultural Compounds or Veterinary Medicines (ACVM) that have been specially authorised, have an ACVM registration number, and require a veterinarian to authorise their administration or sale.

RVMs containing antibiotics cannot be advertised to end users. Some other RVMs also can’t be advertised, such as vaccines against exotic diseases.

The ACVM Act (s 2) defines advertisement as, “Any publication to the community or to any section of the community of any words (whether written, printed, spoken, or in any electronic form, or of any pictorial representation or design or device) used to promote the sale of any agricultural compound”.

Products registered under the ACVM Act have conditions about advertising attached to their registration. The conditions are that advertisements cannot:

Generally, product and price lists for ACVM authorised products are not considered advertising.

Any information that may be associated with a product or price list should be limited to either information from the label or the label itself. Price lists can be paper or digital, including being listed on websites. The use of superlatives or comparison claims on either would be considered advertising.

Veterinarians should make all pricing transparent when providing price lists. True transparency consists of more than just product pricing and price lists should also include service fees to enable clients to understand the real costs. This is important because a veterinary consultation is required to complete the authorisation of an RVM.

It is important that pricelists can be distinguished from other documents, such as order forms and pre-order documents. This helps avoid the impression of being buyer driven rather than reflecting a veterinary led problem-solving consultation, (including emergency care requirements2 – e.g. a veterinary authorisation driven approach).

The Veterinary Medicines section of the Code of Professional Conduct sets out requirements for advertising RVMs. When advertising RVMs, veterinarians must:

This could be done with a product availability statement, such as “Only available under veterinary authorisation”.

For registered products, you must state that the product is registered under the ACVM Act in New Zealand. For example, ‘ACVM Registration No. (A/P/V)XXXX’.

This makes it clear when people require a veterinary authorisation. Requirements of product availability statements for various products can be found here.

Veterinarians should consider the following:

A conflict of interest happens when a veterinarian’s duties and responsibilities are affected by another interest, like a personal or commercial interest. If you have a conflict of interest do not advertise the RVM.

The potential for commercial influence is relevant for decisions involving the authorisation and/or sale of both restricted and unrestricted veterinary medicines.

While recommending or authorising a particular product that you receive an incentive for (such as a commission or a rebate) may not affect treatment decisions, it could give the appearance that it does, and it could affect veterinary sales decisions. The public puts trust in veterinarians and other clinic staff to give them expert, unbiased advice about their animals’ health. The perception that some of that advice was influenced by incentives could undermine the veterinarian’s trustworthiness.

Veterinary businesses should also consider the risk of taking incentives, particularly if they become vital to a business model or where their business systems (and ultimately authorising decisions) may be influenced by a need for sales.

This could undermine the social licence of veterinarians who are relied upon to operate independently.

These products have a condition of registration (condition 58) which means advertising for the product must not be targeted at end users such as farmers or pet owners. This condition was introduced to help enable prudent use of antibiotics (with a focus on the management of antibiotic resistance) and good product stewardship.

Registrants and veterinarians can provide product label information and safety data sheets to end users, such as farmers and pet owners, if antibiotics are authorised by a veterinarian.

Veterinarians may advertise RVMs to end users (including offering purchasing incentives) provided there is no specific condition of registration banning this, and the product is not an antibiotic.

If displaying a registered veterinary product where the public can see it, the advertising veterinarian must tell the potential buyers that they need to discuss treatment options with their veterinarian.

Advertising does not include general information transfer or disease state awareness. It is important that the industry provides good advice on using agricultural compounds and veterinary medicines, and also understands when information transfer crosses into advertising.

Two of the key factors to consider are:

If these factors go together, it is often considered advertising.

To learn more about information transfer, refer to the ACVM Advertising guidelines for products authorised under the ACVM Act.

Many RVMs are subject to Condition 66 which places limitations on acceptable content and states that no advertisement for the product may:

There will be situations (that are not considered to be part of a veterinary consultation) where the end users, such as farmers, need information about treatment options that specifically relate to using antibiotics. This means information should reference the appropriate use of antibiotics and not specific trade names. This could be communicated through veterinary newsletters; social media; at farmer field days; on the registrant’s website; or specific forums.

What is considered acceptable information transfer can depend on the forum.

Examples include:

Any materials intended for end users, or to which end users might be exposed, should not include website links (New Zealand or overseas) to trade name products containing antibiotics.

Websites advertising RVMs containing antibiotics (including products for purchase) in accordance with Condition 58 should be managed so that access is restricted to veterinarians and/or people with appropriate ACVM approvals.

Any off-label use of a product has the potential to cause residues, animal welfare/plant safety concerns, or efficacy issues that were not assessed during its registration process. Therefore, off-label uses must not be advertised.

Advertisements cannot be created to sell a product: