Mr. Joe Moffitt:

I do not see that will be a problem. It is something that goes on now anyway where the farmers and the vets have an ongoing relationship, and when difficulties crop up, they are able to manage to sort them out between them.

On the licensed merchants and the pharmacists, we hope their expertise would be retained at the dispensing end. No real change to the supply routes is envisaged in the regulations and we would expect the knowledge which they have built up and the relationship they have built with farmers over the years will be retained and would feed into the whole knowledge base.

Deputy Ring said regulations bring cost. That is a reasonable assumption in this situation where there is an increased expectation on prescribing that there be increased cost at the beginning. We feel there is a large public interest section in this on antimicrobial resistance. The antiparasitic resistance goes to the heart of the sustainability of agriculture in the country. Most players in this situation would hope there would be some mitigation towards the costs at the beginning but that the requirement for them would reduce as time goes on and further savings were achieved through less use of drugs, better disease control and less ultimate expense on the farmers.

If there are any other unanswered questions, I ask members please to come back to us because we are trying our best to answer them all as we go along.