Mr. Gerry Neary:

The problem we have is not ownership, it is the autonomy of veterinary practitioners to practise veterinary medicine free from encumbrances from clients, corporate bodies or lay people who may have an agenda that does not meet our ethics. It really is as simple as this. It is autonomy to practice veterinary medicine in an ethically and legally correct way. Vets want to maintain this for themselves. There was a recent case in Germany where a Dutch pharmaceutical company bought a Dutch pharmacy. The German pharmaceutical council took a case to the European courts and within the past four or five months a ruling was made that each state, if it sees good reason for a stance it wishes to take on human health, animal health or professional ethics grounds is within its rights to protect those professions. This is used.

Since the Veterinary Practice Act of the 1800s, legislation has always protected the practice of veterinary medicine from lay corporate bodies and lay persons. It is not a question of who owns the practice; our legal advice is that it does not really matter. Vets have to be able to run their practices independently; therein lies the crux of the matter.