Pet owners across the UK could be banned from buying flea treatment for cats and dogs under new government rules.
Ministers have begun an eight-week consultation on letting only veterinary practitioners or pharmacists give out the potent, pesticide-based flea treatments, to ensure “correct usage”. At the moment, the flea and tick treatments can be bought from any pet shop.
That’s right children, “restrictive practice”. If only vets can sell Advantix then there will be no competitive pressure to reduce the price of Advantix. “Restrictive practice”.
When I first read this, I thought the suggestion was that vets would have to administer the treatment, which would make cat ownership remarkably expensive!
This measure will just increase the price for the treatment slightly and decrease the convenience for pet owners, while making not the slightest fucking difference to “correct usage”.
In short it is the typical UK government policy. Makes life more difficult and expensive, while achieving nothing, certainly not what it claims to do.
This measure will just increase the price for the treatment slightly…
Slightly? You are being optimistic there: vets always overcharge.
For starters, I’d like to see veterinary medicines that are identical to human medicines available from pharmacies. For example, my daughter’s dog was prescribed fluoxetine hydrochloride (Prozac): the vet charged £65 for each course, a pharmacy would charge £5-£15 for a course on a private prescription…
When I read about what Advantix does, I wondered if I could use it.
“Hell, no! Don’t you dare think of it!”
The fascist state approach to drugs is all must be approved by them. Since doggie drugs haven’t been tested on humans, you can’t use them.
I wonder whether this will attract the same tin-foil behatted loons seeing a campaign to ban dog to cutty favour with Muslims that you now have to wade through on any comment thread about dangerous dog attacks?
Seldom a mention of the Pakistani taxi/uber drivers who refuse to accept blind people and their guide dogs. The laws are very strict and it yet it happens all the time to my auntie in Glasgow.
“loons” would be reasonable if this were untrue. But I see lots of evidence for this campaign, they’re not trying to hide it much.
Given that so many Britons don’t seem much bothered about muslim “grooming” gangs raping the daughters of “rough” people, I have been wondering whether the campaign against dogs will finally ignite some passion in the nation.
Now that it has become part of the culture wars, I feel torn. I like dogs but there is far too much irresponsible dog ownership in the land that ought to be reined in. Nevertheless we can defer that and deal with the wider vermin problem first.
…
Leaving the EU should have led to an end to this type of nonsense. The EU has a vast number of idiotic bureaucrats that produce an endless stream of interfering regulations for the EU Parliament to debate and ratify. Without this the MEP’s would have nothing much to do as the EU is not governed at the lowly level of elected MEP’s.
Unfortunately the idiots in our own Government are also content to drop useless regulation on us, perhaps concealing that they too are not doing anything useful.
“…for the EU Parliament to debate and ratify”
There’s a trailer running on the BBC News channel where a presenter says “this is the EU chamber where laws are passed…”
“Passed”? So it’s MEPs’ jobs to *PASS* laws? They have no option to *reject* laws? Well, yes, that /is/ exactly how the EU system is set up. “This is for your own good, make it so, dammit!”
My mate the Saffa vet reckons the stuff they sell in supermarkets is shit anyway. And I suppose he would say that, except that I get all our cats and dogs’ drugs off him at cost price. Not that it’s a sensible use of government time to ban it, obviously.
If they’re worried about the effect on birds, then perhaps just banning cats would be a far more effective solution. And maybe take sweets from children while they’re at it… except they’ve already done that.
Biggest killer of birds is (are?) windows. Not sure trying to ban them is going to gain much traction.
Wind turbines do a fair few in too (allegedly 200 per turbine per year plus lots of bats, but no one knows for sure) but Mad Ed would make sure nothing is allowed to ban them.
Yes and no. Lots of animal medicines are only available on prescription, but there is a healthy online competition that keeps the offline vets honest. The main issue is whether a prescription will be required or not. Thats what will bang the price up if it is. There’s lots of online animal health pharmacies who will sell it cheap I’m sure. They do for everything else.
The active ingredients in Advantix are a. unpleasant and b. overkill. A simple bug repellent containing diethyl toluamide as used by hikers to deter ticks costs little, works perfectly on fleas and mosquitoes, is safe for cats and dogs, and should last for a hundred treatments. I suspect that there’s some retail price maintenance going on.
This does contain neonicotinoids, there is evidence that flea treatments do harm invertebrates, so control is not unreasonable.
Flea treatments are intended to harm invertebrates. That’s the point of them.
That’s why I should check before I post.
I should have said, “harm invertebrates in rivers and is causing their numbers to decline,” for example Mayflies.
there is evidence that flea treatments do harm invertebrates
Fleas are invertebrates.
The invertebrates peeps are worried about ( pollinators and pest hunters ) when it comes to neonicotinoïs do not feed/bother dogs…. At all….
The harm to the invertebrate is at pont of contact, when it tries to *feed*.
So any “Concerns” about the “Wider Environment” are, quite frankly, utter bullcrap.
See here
Love Your Pet, Not Pesticides: New Report Warns of Flea and Tick Treatment Threat to Rivers – Buglife latest news
A “charity” literally living on Worrying about Bugs doing a “desk study” about Things Being Bad for Bugs.. finding Things *may* be Bad for Bugs and Cause for Worry without not at any time giving actual concrete evidence to support their claims.
Bravo…. Got anything actually…. y’know… documented and relevant? Maybe even *shock, horror!!* scientific?
Hell… Steve’s Biblethumping actually makes more sense…
Also likely due to pressure from Muslim groups to make it more inconvenient to have pets, especially dogs.
If that is the reason, then it is wrong. (BTW I love dogs), however although Islam is anti dogs – so are some non Muslims
Some people dislike dogs because of their experience with dogs. In my case having three scars on the back of my head and one on my arm after being attacked by a dog at the age of 13 for some reason put me off (and most of them smell).
The ropers on the other hand only hate dogs because they’ve been brainwashed to so do.
Hang on… It was only a few weeks ago they were bitching about vets ripping people off. Now they want to reduce competition?
I give my dog an oral flea and tick treatment once a month or every six months. Simparica or Bravecto. Has this technology not reached British shores?
When I first glanced at the first sentence I thought it would be about protecting fleas.
There is a certain type of nutter which argues for exactly that, because they “are part of the Ecosystem”…
They generally get very huffy when I explain to them that it’s logical for parasites to defend the “rights” of parasites…
You rub it on your dog. How could people do that wrong?
One should consider this bullshit. No involved parties can be trusted to tell the truth about toxicity thresholds. Without published standards and measured data, it is fiction. Steve Milloy challenged this imidacloprid shtick on Long Island 14 years ago.
My dogs rarely got fleas because they were groomed every day after walks and any found were dealt with by a flea comb.Fleas squash with a satisfying crunch when pressed with a fingernail. The main parasite problem was ticks as we lived in sheep and deer country. Again dealt with by a tick lifter ( like a miniature crowbar ) inserted between the dog and the tick.. But you have to careful not to leave the ticks head in place.
Primitivism doesn’t appeal to most.
How does the proposed change ensure correct usage? It’s not a proposal that the treatment must be administered by professionals – just that it must be bought from them. Does it acquire some magic pixie dust from passing through their hands?