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Animal Welfare and Health Canada's Veterinary Drugs Directorate
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Animal Welfare: Health Canada's Veterinary Drugs Directorate's Perspective
The Veterinary Drugs Directorate (VDD) is part of the Health Products and Food Branch of Health Canada. VDD is responsible for ensuring the safety of foods such as milk, meat, eggs, fish, and honey from animals treated with veterinary drugs. VDD also ensures that veterinary drugs sold in Canada are safe and effective for animals.
Animal Welfare: our values
VDD recognizes that the availability of safe and effective drugs is critical to animal health and welfare. In fact, VDD's drug approval process evaluates the benefits associated with the use of a veterinary drug versus its side effects.
VDD supports adherence to ethical standards for animal care during pre-clinical and clinical studies. It is important that manufacturers of veterinary drugs adhere to established guidelines and standards during the development of their products.
What is VDD doing about Animal Welfare?
In its review process, VDD takes into consideration animal welfare and safety issues.
Animal welfare interests are represented on VDD's Stakeholder Committee (two seats out of 18) within a broad representation of interest groups.
By participating in the 
International Cooperation on Harmonization of Technical Requirements for Registration of Veterinary Medicinal Products (VICH), VDD is pursuing animal welfare interests at the international level. By developing guidelines, VICH is working to standardize research tests involving animals to ensure their safety and to reduce the number of animals being used for research purposes.
Through its Pharmacovigilance program, VDD monitors the safety and effectiveness of veterinary drugs administered to animals in Canada. This adverse drug reaction reporting system provides post-market safety surveillance to improve the monitoring of the use of veterinary drugs in Canada. It is also a source of valuable data for consideration in drug reviews, and informs animal owners, veterinary practitioners and food producers of potential risks, where warranted.
Who is responsible to establish scientific standards used in animal testing and research in Canada?
The Canadian Council on Animal Care (CCAC) is a national peer review agency responsible to establish and maintain standards for the care and use of animals for research, teaching and testing that employ optimal physical and psychological care according to acceptable scientific standards. The CCAC also promotes awareness and sensitivity to relevant ethical principles. Health Canada is a member of the CCAC, actively participates in the CCAC program and holds the Certificate of Good Animal Practice for its animal care facilities.
September 2004
