Operational Notice - Complaints About Advertising
June 2004
The APVMA has a role to ensure that persons dealing with agricultural and veterinary chemicals are aware of their need to comply with the requirements of the Agvet Code. The action taken by the APVMA, in relation to complaints, will be commensurate with the significance of the non-compliance and the availability of other remedies. The matters of significance addressed by the Agvet Code are directed to preventing harm to human and animal health, harm to the environment and to protecting trade outside of Australia. The Code also addresses matters of product efficacy in relation to label claims. The APVMA's compliance efforts are risk based and focus on these important areas.
Advertising that promotes unregistered products or makes unapproved claims about registered products, is often referred to the APVMA Compliance Section for action. In many instances the alleged non-compliance is concerned with commercial competition issues, rather than any significant threat to human or animal health, environmental harm or an adverse impact on trade. The APVMA will not take action on complaints involving commercial competition issues. Such complaints can often be more appropriately considered by authorities responsible for fair trading in the States and Territories or the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission or through civil action.
The APVMA will only respond to advertising complaints which reveal an offence under the Agvet Code and involve significant harm to human or animal health, environmental harm or an impact on trade. The offences which the APVMA can address are:
- advertising an unregistered agricultural or veterinary chemical product; and - making a claim about a registered product that is either inconsistent with a label instruction, or is false or misleading. In both these cases the question also arises as to whether the discrepancy complained about is significant.
Complaints about efficacy claims in advertising will not be addressed unless substantial economic loss for users can be established.
The APVMA and its employees are not authorised to, and will not, give any approval or advice about whether or not a particular advertising claim would give rise to a breach of any of these provisions of the Agvet Codes. This is a matter on which a company should seek its own legal advice.