Why getting your pet's prescription filled at a pharmacy isn't an easy option in Canada
CBC/Radio-Canada investigation finds some in industry work to limit supply of pet meds
With three dogs, Anna Mikicinki sees her pets' medical bills add up quickly. She figured out a way to cut costs, but it involved shopping for pet medications on the other side of the world.
Mikicinki went online and found the Australian manufacturer of the NexGard flea, tick, heartworm and parasite medications she gives her Australian shepherd and two Pomeranians. Buying directly helped her save almost 70 per cent, she said.
"In Canada, a nine-month supply would cost me around $1,170 Canadian. From Australia, a nine-month supply costs me $366," she told The Fifth Estate via email.
But this year, the company stopped selling directly to Canada, leaving Mikicinki to find a workaround.
"I have to have them sent to a friend in Australia who sends them to me now," said Mikicinki, who lives in Dorchester, Ont., near London.
- Watch the full documentary, "Pet Care Inc.," from The Fifth Estate on YouTube or CBC-TV on Friday at 9 p.m.
The Fifth Estate and Marketplace, along with Radio-Canada's investigative programs Enquête and La facture, teamed up to investigate the changing veterinary care landscape in Canada: from access to pet medications to the consequences of corporations and private equity buying up independent clinics.
Our investigation revealed how the veterinary industry, through exclusive distribution deals between pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors, limits who can purchase and sell pet medications.
The issue was highlighted in a recent report from the Competition Bureau of Canada, which said Canadians need more choice when it comes to filling their pet's prescriptions, and affordable medications should be more readily available.
"Manufacturers have begun to remove exclusivity clauses in their contracts … distributors continue to maintain exclusive distribution policies and only sell to veterinarians," the report said.
The Fifth Estate examined regulations across the country and learned they vary from province to province.
In Quebec, pharmacists are allowed to dispense animal-specific medicines and have a distributor, CDMV, willing to supply them. But that's not the case in Ontario, where the provincial vet regulator's bylaws specifically say vets can't resell to pharmacists except in certain circumstances. In British Columbia, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, veterinarians are prohibited from reselling pet medicines to pharmacists.
But beyond limiting sales, the CBC/Radio Canada investigation also examined how industry players in Ontario have attempted to shut down vets who have helped pharmacists seeking a place in the pet medicine market.
In one case, Vet Purchasing, a distributor owned as a co-op by veterinarians, confirmed to The Fifth Estate that it limits sales to their members, leaving pharmacists out in the cold.
The head of the largest vet association in Canada, meanwhile, defends limiting the sale of pet medications to veterinarians as a safety issue.
"Human pharmacists and human pharmacy technicians know nothing about the species I'm treating," said Dr. Tim Arthur, president of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association.
Fighting for more access
In 2020, Dr. Howard Covant, a veterinarian in Thornhill, Ont., north of Toronto, was found guilty of professional misconduct by the provincial vet regulator for selling animal-specific medicines to pharmacists. His efforts to open access thrust him into a seven-year legal battle with the regulator.
Covant said he thinks it's a conflict of interest for vets to be allowed to both prescribe and sell pet medications, a practice not allowed for human doctors, dentists and optometrists.
"If you were the person prescribing the only medication that can save you and I'm also the only one who's selling it, there's a problem," said Covant, who has been a vet for 39 years.
While veterinary regulators recognize a potential conflict, and guide vets on prescribing and dispensing, Covant thinks pharmacists should also be able to dispense medications for pets.
He said while veterinarians are still the ideal choice to decide what medications are best for pets, "the question is: 'Is the medication available over the internet or at a pet pharmacy the same as the one that your veterinarian is selling?'
"And the answer is yes. And if they're selling it for 30 per cent less and it's not going to endanger the animal to pick that medication up, why wouldn't you?"
Canadians seeking options
Many pet owners in Canada may not realize that they can ask their vet for a prescription for their pet's medications and take it to a pharmacy.
But the CBC/Radio-Canada investigation found that while veterinarians are obliged to provide a prescription if asked, they aren't obliged to inform clients of this option.
In the U.S. and some other countries, the experience is different for pet owners, with more options for accessing pet medications.
In the U.S., they can buy their pet medicines online or in brick-and-mortar pharmacies, including from larger companies like Chewy, Costco and Walmart. That came after the Federal Trade Commission took a hard look at the issue in 2015.
South of the border, there are 41 online pet pharmacies accredited with the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. In Canada, there are just two, both in Ontario.
One of them, petsdrugmart.ca, has been at the centre of a long battle. It pitted pharmacist Wendy Chui and Covant on one side, and pharmaceutical companies, veterinary regulators and distributors on the other.
"I really felt I was bullied," Chui told The Fifth Estate. "They want to keep vet medication only being sold at vet clinics."
Chui started dispensing pet medications in 2010 and went online in 2013. She said she had a difficult time acquiring supply. Drug manufacturers turned her away and distributor Vet Purchasing in Ontario refused to sell to her because she wasn't a veterinarian.
Then she connected with Covant. He was using his position as a vet to purchase extra medicine and then resell to pharmacists, Chui among them.
But in 2017, the arrangement hit a major roadblock.
Investigators from the College of Veterinarians of Ontario came to Covant's office to seize documents as part of a probe into Covant reselling medications to pharmacists.
At that point, Covant said, he learned that provincial rules around reselling pet medications had been changed in 2015 to say veterinarians could only resell to another vet or pharmacist in limited quantities to deal with a temporary shortage. He also learned the seizure came after a complaint by drugmaker Bayer.
Covant said he thinks the rule change was created to target vets like himself.
"Veterinarians have specifically tried to prevent people from understanding that there are other sources for their pets' medication," Covant said.
After being found guilty of professional misconduct by an Ontario vet college disciplinary committee, Covant spent nearly $400 000 in legal fees and fines fighting the decision. He said it was to raise awareness among pet owners that they have options for filling their pets' prescriptions.
Covant's mission has been a source of controversy among veterinarians. Tim Arthur, president of the CVMA, criticized his actions.
"If somebody wants to buy a product and then move it to a pharmacy knowing dang well that that is not a legal thing. I'm sorry, I don't have a lot of respect for that decision," Arthur told The Fifth Estate.
Elanco, which bought Bayer's animal health division, wrote in a statement to CBC that currently it does sell "prescription pet health products via our authorized distribution channels to pharmacists with veterinary product experience on a case-by-case basis."
Covant points out that reselling was legal until Ontario vet college regulations changed in 2015, which he argues was not properly publicized to vets.
The Competition Bureau weighs in
Chui and Covant went to the Competition Bureau, each filing one of the dozens of complaints that eventually led to the October 2024 report.
"I felt fair market competition is not in place," Chui said. "So I was fighting for my business for sure but also all of these animals.
"What we found is that there's a system of exclusive distribution, which means that the drug manufacturers sell exclusively to distributors who then sell exclusively to veterinarians. Effectively [they] were pushing aside or excluding pharmacists," said Youssef Zine Elabidine, a competition law officer with the Competition Bureau of Canada.
Zine Elabidine said the system should be open to allow pharmacists better access.
"Our recommendation is to actually mandate the supply, because we want to ensure that pharmacists are able to participate in the marketplace," he said.
He said more access will lead to greater competition and potentially lower prices.
That's welcome news for pet owners like Mary Guay in Montreal. She said her German Shepherd has skin allergies, so she's having to buy various products to treat her.
"At one point, my German shepherd was taking the same antibiotic that I was and the cost of her prescription was four times the cost of my pills," Guay wrote in an email to The Fifth Estate.
'They know little about those drugs'
The CVMA's Tim Arthur said the practice of both prescribing and dispensing medications to pet owners has been in place for decades and works for the benefit of the animals. He says vets have animal-specific knowledge pharmacists don't.
"Some of the drugs that I'm using don't have human equivalents, so they know little about those drugs."
The price of human medicines in Canada is regulated by the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB), but the prices for animal medicines are unregulated.
Arthur said veterinarians rely on markups from the sale of pet medications to help sustain their business, often raising prices on cheaper drugs in order to keep more expensive services affordable.
While he said vets will offer the public more options for their prescriptions, if directed, he warns the potential loss in revenue could result in prices being raised for other services.
The Fifth Estate obtained a copy of the Ontario's Veterinary Medical Association (OVMA) member newsletter issued just days after the Competition Bureau report. In it, the OVMA tells members the status quo remains, for now.
"Currently, the recommendations in the paper do not change the existing landscape of veterinary medicine. However, OVMA is actively monitoring this development and collaborating with our partners to ensure that any emerging concerns are addressed in a timely manner."
Some pharmacists want more collaboration
Pharmacist Grace Frankel in Ste-Anne, Man., knows first-hand how pharmacists and their understanding of human medicines can help pets.
Two years ago, her Australian shepherd, Finnigan, started experiencing seizures that almost killed him.
"He'd have a seizure and then would have another and another, and they would get closer and closer together until we couldn't actually stop his seizing until he was hospitalized," Frankel told The Fifth Estate.
Working with her veterinarian, they figured out that Finnigan had a gut disease and put him on a regimen of prescription medications and supplements. The key drug that saved him was a new human drug that the vet was not aware of.
"Even though animals are different, they share a lot of the same problems that we do and they're treated for the most part, pretty similarly", Frankel said.
The vast majority of drugs used for pets are derived from human medicines. In Health Canada's database of drugs authorized for humans, there are 3,433 entries. For animals, there are 157 entries.
Finnigan's seizures are under control and Frankel said her knowledge as a pharmacist helped keep him alive.
"I think that this is just an untapped opportunity for two different professions to work together. If opening this up and competition drives prices lower, I'm all for that."
Do you have an experience with pet care you'd like to share? Email us at [email protected]