Over the last few years, what with the Marsh Report, the Competitions Commission investigations and report, and now the eagerly awaited new Medicines Regulations that the DTI will be forcing on our profession, the medicines issue has become very highprofile within the veterinary profession. One potentially worrying and possibly labour intensive potential outcome is the issue of batch number recording of POMs so I felt a look at the pros and cons of this issue would not go amiss. We've been recordingbatch numbers of vaccines used ever since I graduated and that wasn't yesterday! It's been laborious, but necessary, noting down, for example 004302A & 74091A by hand either on the case history cards or latterly the computer. Why - because faults couldoccur in the manufacturing of batches of vaccines leading to non-protection of, or adverse reactions by the animal. This has far reaching consequences for other animals vaccinated with the same batch so recall and revaccination is necessary. Far more, I would argue, than the need to record every batch number of each supply of 10 antibiotic tablets handed out or 0.2 ml of an analgesic administered at a consultation.
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