Federated Farmers Push to Cut Costly Vet Drug Waste on Dairy Farms

Rosemarie Costar, the newly elected Auckland Federated Farmers president, told its recent conference that waste was something all farmers hated to see.

But last April, after Fonterra shed inspections were carried out, new rules came into place meaning farmers had to write on drug containers when they were first opened and discard any contents that were left over according to the instructions and the date on the packaging.

When she became aware of this as Auckland Dairy chair she started talking to food quality auditors, QCONZ, Franklin Vets and the co-op to see if there was a solution to the problem.

High-Cost Vet Drugs Often Discarded Early

An example of the waste which could occur was the anti-inflammatory Metacam 40 which is commonly used during calving. It costs $450 for a 100ml bottle which needs to be discarded 28 days after opening even if only one 7ml dose had been used.

A similar product costing $340 for a 250ml container needs to be discarded 90 days after opening. This is because of the risk of needles, particularly those which have been used, going back into the bottle which could cause contamination. This could also come about if the bottle cap wasn't kept clean.

Initially it was an animal welfare concern as farmers were saying that they would no longer use such expensive products if they would quickly have to throw away the unused contents, as there was no way they would go through a whole bottle in as little as 28 days, she said.

"The missing piece of the puzzle was finding the ability to keep using the drugs within the rules."

Collaboration Finds Compliance Solution

Discussions between representatives of the four groups revealed that under Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) regulations, vets could provide alternative instructions for drug use by writing it on the farmer's RVM script.

This could be by specifying that a dispensive gun needed to be used so that when it clicked into place the drug bottle was only broached once and there was no ongoing contamination risk.

"Then farmers would be compliant against the regulations and wouldn't have to discard unused drugs," she said.

The vet would have to provide their recommended timeframe for using the drugs and the actual expiry date on the bottle would still have to be adhered to by farmers.

As giving different instructions to those on the drug container would be considered off label use specific advice would need to be given by vets at their discretion to each individual farmer client.

"Franklin Vets did quite a lot of homework on this and QCONZ and Fonterra were extremely helpful in finding a solution, but it took us a year for us all to be comfortable," Costar said.

"It's a win in reducing wastage and maintaining our very high levels of animal welfare."

The task was to get the message out to farmers so they could speak to their vet about what approach would best suit their farming needs.

New President

Rosemarie Costar and her husband, Bryce, run 300 cows on 160ha at Onewhero, south of the Waikato River, producing 520kg milksolids (MS)/cow under DairyNZ system 3-4.

She was Auckland Federated Farmers Dairy chair for the last four years and a Waikato District councillor from 2012 to 2015.

She takes over as president from Alan Cole who spent seven years in the role.