Am I alone in getting a bit peeved that our friends in the US can buy puppy vaccines & boosters online at a fraction of what they cost us to be given by the vet? I didn't look for the cheapest supplier, but 25 doses of a reputable puppy vaccine costs ~£40 in the US ... less than the price of giving one pup it's puppy vaccs from many UK vets.

But in the US you can jab your own animals and shoe your horses yourself too.  Neither is allowed in the UK

That's what I mean tohme. Why are we not allowed to vaccinate our own animals here, and why such a vast mark up on vaccines. I'm very opposed to the free availability of antibiotics, painkillers & psychotrophic drugs for humans and animals in and from the US, but I can't for the life of me see a good reason why UK pet owners should not give their own vaccines. Nor can I see why very safe flea treatments like Frontline should be POMs in this country.

OK I am confused, thought you could treat your own stock in the UK, you can't buy POM drugs with out a prescription but having got the drug you can administer. There may be a control on IV drugs but otherwise I have always believed you could treat your own stock, but it is illegal even to diagnose the stock of someone else.

No, a non-vet is forbidden to administer vaccines to domestic animals.

em, perhaps someone should tell the vets that.

Sorry Jackie, what I wrote was a bit confusing. :)

Yes you can treat your own animals as long as what you do is withing your capabilities and you don't cause suffering by failing to get a vet. I don't think it has passed into law yet, but the SoS has accepted the March Report's strong recommendation that vets' monopoly on dispensing should be broken and that they should have to give a prescription for POMs on request although they will probably be able to charge a fee for writing it. But I doubt that this will reduce vaccine prices to US levels as the manufaturers, pharmacists & the vets' fee for writing the scripts will just take up the slack.

What I'm really asking is why should canine vaccines (and flea / tick tratments) be POMs at all? Why not allow the same free competition of online / over the counter sales as there is in the US? The flip side is the deplorable lack of contol on prescribing human and animal antibiotics, analgesics & psychotrophic drugs in th US but animal vaccines do not pose the same risk of harm that inappropriate use of painkillers / psychotrophics does and can not encourage antibiotic resistant organisms in the way that arbitrary use of anibiotics does.

I think it's because vaccines should only be adminstered to healthy individuals, and there are many people who either wouldn't know or wouldn't care if their animal was well enough.

For some time vets have been obliged to provide a prescription if one is requested, but theyare indeed entitled to charge for doing so. (The charge usually is equal to the saving in the cost of the drug ;) )
:)

I do take the point JG, but the problem does not seem to arise in the US and the same could be said of wormers. ;) I think the real answer is that vaccines are a very quick and easy earner for vets. So is dispensing generally as demonstrated by the way the fought tooth & nail against the Competition Commission report. I'm not anti-vet. Far from it - my practice is excellent and I've known them to 'go easy' on billing for major problems many times, especially when the owner would struggle to pay a bill running into thousands. But although in my practice the cost of major investigations/surgery/treatment is so reasonable that it more than cancels out the enormous mark up on vaccines, Frontline etc, that isn't true for many people.

In the UK pet vaccination and routine parasite treatment is a rip off on a par with the legalised robbery enjoyed by dispensing opticians and surely that can't but create scepticism of the profession. Perhaps we even see some of that here judging by the number of people who do seem to distrust vets in general?