Your business is not called a community pharmacy for nothing. Every day you have a constant stream of local residents coming into your pharmacy. There are mothers with their babies and young children, there are older people living on their own who eke out their visit as an opportunity to chat with you and your assistants. And what many of these people have in common is their love for their pets.

Over half of all households in the UK are thought to own at least one pet. There are an estimated 8 million cats, 7 million dogs, 2.5 million caged birds and over 18 million aquarium fish. Horses and ponies, most of which are kept for riding, number around 850,000, and an estimated 10 million pigeons are kept for racing and showing, in addition to those bred for their meat. Rabbits are growing in popularity and number.

Research conducted by the NPA and Royal Pharmaceutical Society in 2002 estimated that pet owners make 500,000 visits to pharmacies every day. At that time, pharmacy’s share of pet medicines sales was only 10 per cent. The same study estimated that the number of non-specialist pharmacies (i.e. excluding specialist veterinary pharmacies) selling animal medicines was around 750 – and that the average sales of animal medicines from these pharmacies was around £100 a week.

This does not seem an incentive to become interested in animal medicines. But times have changed since that study – and the time may be right for more pharmacists to become involved.

Recent changes

A new set of Veterinary Medicines Regulations was introduced in 2005 and is being updated every year. They not only satisfy the legal requirement of the European Veterinary Medicines Directive, but also implement the proposals from the Marsh Report and the Competition Commission report – essentially to increase options for availability of animal medicines.

In November 2005, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) issued a new Guide to Professional Conduct, which requires its members to ensure that clients are able to obtain prescriptions where appropriate. Veterinary surgeons are not allowed to charge for issuing prescriptions for POM-V medicines for three years. What this could mean is that you dispense more veterinary prescriptions.

When dispensing prescriptions, pharmacists must supply the product named on the prescription. (Unlike human medicine, generic substitution is not permitted.) If the prescription is for an active ingredient as opposed to a brand, then the pharmacist must still supply a veterinary product if one is authorised. The Veterinary Formulary (published by the Pharmaceutical Press in association with the British Veterinary Association) and the NOAH Compendium of Data Sheets for Animal Medicines, available from NOAH and free of charge online (www.noahcompendium.co.uk ), may be useful reference sources.

Going further

But what if you want to go further than dispensing? There are two main options. Option one is to increase your slice of the animal medicines market cake. You could try to get pet owners involved with regular pet health care to buy from you rather than from your competitors. But would this small gain be worth the effort in such a small market compared with your existing human medicine market?

Far better to go for option two: to make a bigger cake by encouraging new owners to commit to regular healthcare for their pets. There is a lot of potential. Around 60 per cent of pets receive neither regular health checks nor vaccination. Perhaps more relevant to pharmacies, a large proportion of animals are not regularly wormed nor receive flea prevention or treatment. Owners may not be aware of the need for routine pet healthcare, or they may fear the cost and only consider going to a vet when their pet is ill or injured. So the pharmacist is well positioned to make owners aware of disease prevention and helping to keep the pet population healthy.

For example, half the cats in the UK do not appear to be wormed at all. Of those that are, few are being wormed as frequently as recommended in the medicines dosing instructions. So there are huge opportunities for pharmacists, as well as vets, to grow the market. The same arguments apply for dog wormers and cat and dog flea treatments.

Communicating the benefits of medicines can work. The dog and cat veterinary endoparasiticides market has grown over 66 per cent during 2000–05 through marketing communication. Over a similar period, the retail sale value of wormers through the OTC channel grew by 50 per cent but from a much smaller base. Under the new Regulations, NFA-VPS products, which can be supplied by pharmacists without prescription (as well as by vets and SQPs – suitably qualified persons), can be advertised directly to pet owners, whereas prescription only medicines cannot. The overall market has the potential to grow by three or four times if all pets had basic treatment.

So how can the pharmacist help to increase the proportion of pets benefiting from routine disease prevention? Pharmacists are skilled and experienced referral professionals for human illness. They can similarly increase the footfall to veterinary practices for routine health checks. The vet benefits from more clinical referrals, more medicines are prescribed and used responsibly in otherwise untreated animals and more clients are educated on benefits of preventive healthcare for their pets. Pharmacists are then recognised in a more holistic sense by helping the health of the whole family including the pets.

But a busy pharmacist cannot work for purely altruistic reasons, even to benefit pet health. There needs to be something in it for you too! If vets see more clients, pharmacists can possibly take a share in the dispensing of larger volumes of any POM-V (veterinary) medicines prescribed. You can create new sales for POM-VPS (veterinary, pharmacy and suitably qualified persons) medicines for farm livestock, which you can prescribe and dispense directly yourself. You can actively promote the need for routine pet healthcare – the more profile this has, the more your pet-owning customers will see you as a partner in the care of their animal. As the total market grows, you will get more support from marketing authorisation holders. Animal health improves, disease is prevented and you perform an important public health function by reducing the potential for zoonosis – everyone wins!

What to stock

The range of products you might choose to stock will depend on your pharmacy – you know your local community best. Get talking to your customers as you plan. A rural pharmacy is likely to stock a wider range than an urban pharmacy: e.g. equine products may not be so appropriate in the middle of a town. In general, however, your range should include the following:

• Wormers for cats, dogs and racing pigeons and possibly horses;
• Flea treatments for cats and dogs.

Within these categories it is advisable to stock a wide range of products so that customers will return to you for further supplies. It is worth keeping an eye out for products that are reclassified in the future from POM-V to NFA-VPS status and stocking these. The best-selling product in the flea market (Frontline) was reclassified from POM-V to NFA-VPS in mid-2006, and it is possible others will follow.

If selling pet medicines is a new venture for you, customers may not realise these are available so you will need to announce what you have started to do. You might encourage some of the people who never visit a vet to start on the road towards regular preventive healthcare.

You could hand out a leaflet to customers when they collect their prescriptions. Of course, you will have made a display of your animal medicines (the NPA Animal Medicines Resource Pack gives good advice on what to do). Perhaps you might like to include some leaflets such as those produced by the Pet Health Council (PCH – www.pethealthcouncil.co.uk ) on responsible pet ownership. PHC’s Petsercise campaign might even help your customers to get fit alongside their pet. NOAH produces a range of briefing documents on animal medicines topics, which are useful to give to customers and can help with questions that you or your staff might be asked (www.noah.co.uk ).

Promote your professional services through local dog-training clubs, livery yards and grooming parlours. You’ll find lists in local directories or on the Internet. Work alongside your veterinary colleagues – remember you’re all trying to grow the market together.

One golden opportunity is to take advantage of National Pet Week (see www.nationalpetweek.org.uk ) as an opportunity to highlight your service in the local press. Perhaps put on a display or event. National Pet Week has been running for 18 years and activities start during the first bank holiday weekend in May. This is an excellent chance to publicise what you can offer. If you contact them through the website they’ll keep you in touch with plans each year.

Your unique link between pets and people means you are ideally placed to tell your customers about the benefits that pets bring to people’s health. You can get some new animal customers and perhaps even save the NHS some money with your human ones!