Pigs Standards

• AM.2 – A Veterinary Medicinal Product is legally defined as:
  – any substance or combination of substances presented as having properties for treating or preventing disease in animals
  – any substance or combination of substances that may be used in, or administered to, animals with a view either to restoring,correcting or modifying physiological functions by exerting a pharmacological, immunological or metabolic action, or to making a medical diagnosis.

Veterinary medicinal products used to treat and prevent disease in farm animals include, but are not limited to, vaccines, ecto- and endoparasiticides, antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and anesthetics.

POM-V stands for ‘Prescription Only Medicine – Veterinarian’ and these veterinary products may only be supplied upon prescription by a veterinary surgeon for animals under their care. All antibiotics            for food-producing animals are classified as POM-V.

POM-VPS stands for ‘Prescription-Only Medicine – Veterinarian, Pharmacist, Suitably Qualified Person (SQP, also known as RAMA – Registered Animal Medicines Advisor)’ and these products may                be prescribed by these registered qualified persons.

The use of antibiotics as growth promoters is illegal.

• AM.3.1 – Courses include, but are not limited to, City & Guilds, NOAH/Lantra Antimicrobial Best Practice (Pig modules) and veterinary led training courses, as approved by Red Tractor. A list of approved courses can be found on the Red Tractor Assurance website. Certificates obtained from courses undertaken between 1 January 2018 and 31st October 2021 are acceptable as evidence
  of compliance, regardless of whether approved or not.

Fieldspeople attending contract sites may be considered as a person responsible for overseeing use of medicines on the unit. However if there is someone on the unit that is responsible for management            of medicines that person must also have undertaken training.

• AM.5 – Assigned bottle number allows members to assign a bottle number in the purchase records and note the assigned number in the administration records and for those bulk buying medication so individual bottles can be accounted for in records.
• AM.6 – The required information does not need to be in a single location (e.g. a medicine book); it can be stored in a combination of documents. However, a farm must be able to demonstrate how the information can be collated to correlate administration of particular medicines to specific groups of pigs so as to ensure the food chain is protected and any use of medicines is traceable.
  For example, medicines administered routinely to groups of animals, such as vaccines, need not be individually entered in the medicine book. This could be a list in the VHP, medicine book or other document covering the necessary information will suffice as long as it can be correlated against other farm records such as farrowing/service records and associated medicine purchase records.
• AM.8 – *NB this is only required for antibiotics, not other medicines or feed additives. It is not a requirement to use eMB as a daily record of medicines administered, although producers are free to do this if they wish.
• AM.10 – Ensuring treated livestock are “identifiable” may be achieved in different ways. It is not a specific requirement that treated animals are physically marked, although this is one way of ensuring animals are identifiable. The key is that it is possible, through systems employed on the farm, to identify treated animals to protect the food supply chain.