The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently published a new final rule amending the veterinary feed directive (VFD) drugs section of the Animal Drug Availability Act of 1996 that will take effect in October and hog farmers, like all livestock producers, are trying to find out what it means for them.
Dr. Harry Snelson with the American Association of Swine Veterinarians (AASV) answered producers’ questions about the new rule during the Boehringer Ingelheim North Carolina swine seminar last week. “It is a complicated issue,” said Snelson. “FDA’s objective here is to actually increase the level of veterinary oversight on the use of anti-microbials in livestock production.”
Snelson says there are some changes in the new rule for the better. “if you have pigs going, for instance, from a farrowing farm to multiple nurseries, now you’ll be able to actually write one VFD for those animals and list all of the individual premises on there, as long as they’re fed from the same feed mill,” he explained.
Another change is that a veterinarian no longer has to estimate the actual volume of feed that is going to be consumed by the animals on a farm in a certain period of time. “They’ve made the change so that the veterinarian has to estimate the number of animals that are going to be fed and they can work with the feed manufacturer to determine the volume,” said Snelson.
Find out more in this interview: Interview with Harry Snelson, AASV