Surging pet industry raises favourable policies for veterinary drugs
BEIJING: With favourable policies launched and enterprises making increasing efforts, China’s veterinary drug sector has been ushered in this year.
According to the reply to delegates at the fifth session of the 13th National People’s Congress, the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Ministry (Mara) said that it was currently organising a revision of the measures for registering veterinary drugs.
Specifically, the characteristics of veterinary drugs will be further considered, a review system that conforms to the actual situation of the drugs will be established and improved, and the pace of production and marketing of new veterinary drugs will be accelerated to meet surging pet medical demands.
In recent years, with the rapid development of the pet industry, demand for veterinary drugs has become increasingly urgent, and the research and development of these drugs has become an industry hot topic.
According to a recent report from industry research company Chinairn.com, China’s pet medical industry has reached 40 billion yuan (Rm26bil), taking up 20% of the whole pet consumption market. The compound annual growth rate of the sector in the past three years was 20%.
As noted in the report, veterinary drugs are the core of the pet medical industry, whose market volume was 10.5 billion yuan (Rm6.9bil).
To boost the research and development of veterinary drugs, the Mara launched a series of policies.
On May 24, it prioritised and simplified the requirements for clinical approvals of veterinary biological products.
The required number of animals used for clinical experiments in producing veterinary biological products was cut from no less than 200 animals to no fewer than 50 animals.
As reported by healthcare industry media Vcbeat.com, the feline neutering protein vaccine developed by domestic biopharmaceutical company Guangzhou Yuanbo Medical Technology Co Ltd has just obtained clinical trial approval and is preparing to enter fullscale clinical research.
The surging number of pet families in China accompanied the surging demand for veterinary drugs.
At the initial development stage of China’s pet medical industry, due to a lack of bioproducts and loose government regulations, the industry was once scattered and messy.
In recent years, with capital injection, pet hospitals are marching into a collective, standardised and high-level stage, boosting the veterinary drug industry to develop in a more standardised, legalised, high-quality and high-tech manner. — China Daily/ann