Treating animals with chemicals and medicines
A range of controls apply to the use of veterinary chemical products to treat animals.
If you are not a veterinary surgeon, you can only use registered veterinary chemical products, or those approved under permit, on animals. Chemicals must be used according to label or permit instructions.
If you are a veterinary surgeon, you may vary the way the product can be used when:
- written instructions are given to the person in charge of the animal
- or
- a permit has been received from the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA).
Registered chemicals may only be used:
- in a way that is different from a restraint statement on an approved label to treat a single animal
- to inject a chemical when the label states it may be injected.
Food-producing (trade-species) animals
There are strict limitations on the variations allowed for use on food-producing animals, particularly cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens (major trade-species). These requirements reduce the potential risks to human health and trade arising from the use of chemicals on food- and fibre-producing animals. The treated animals must be identified by either:
- tagging with an appropriate National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) device
- keeping them separate from other animals
- keeping written records during the treatment and withholding periods.
Records must be kept for at least 2 years.
- You may only treat a single trade-species animal with compounded or unregistered veterinary chemicals.
- Chemical products may be used contrary to label instructions on companion and trade-species animals other than cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens.
- Horses are not considered trade-species animals.
Major trade-species animals (cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens)
If a product is not registered for use on the animal you wish to treat, you may only use it if the label has instructions for use on another major trade-species animal.
Also consider...
- Visit the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) website.
- Find out how to submit samples for analysis to the Biosecurity Sciences Laboratory.
- Visit Meat and Livestock Australia to learn about the National Livestock Identification System and the Livestock Production Assurance System
- Find out how to obtain and use National Vendor Declarations and waybills
- Visit the Veterinary Surgeons Board to find out about veterinary science in Queensland.