One of the active ingredients in popular mastitis treatment Mastalone is under threat, and Australian Dairy Farmers (ADF) is proactively defending farmers' access. Australia's agvet chemical regulator, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA), - one of the key components of Mastalone. In real terms, this means the sale of Mastalone could be banned simply because of, as APVMA puts it, a lack of data to enable it to assess potential risks to trade from chemical residues.
ADF has made a submission to APVMA outlining the importance of this veterinary chemical product to dairy production in Australia. As the national representative body for dairy farmers across the six dairying states, ADF's mission is to improve the productivity and sustainability of dairy farmers in Australia. Critical to this mission is to maintain and improve Australia's animal health and welfare systems.
The proposed decisions, if implemented, would change the conditions of registration and/or cancel the registration of Mastalone and other vital products. In our submission on behalf of Australia's dairy farmers, we reminded APVMA that mastitis is a painful disease, causing significant animal welfare and economic losses on every dairy farm, and that deregistration of this product would have a counter-intuitive impact on production and animal welfare. Australian dairy farmers must be able to use Mastalone because it contains ingredients (oxytetracycline, oleandomycin and neomycin) th.
