If the Minister will look at Section 15, he will see that subsection (1) (b) provides:
In relation to the use of poisons for agricultural and veterinary purposes, including regulations prohibiting, restricting or controlling the use of poisons or particular poisons for agricultural or veterinary purposes or particular agricultural or veterinary purposes.
We are prepared to agree with such regulations to control the use of poisonous materials for agricultural purposes because there are poisonous sprays which, unless used with special precautions, may cause unexpected damage not only to crops but to the health of those putting them out or, indeed, to the health of neighbours who may inadvertently come in contact with them. When you come to veterinary preparations, however, we think power should not be vested in the Minister to control the use of particular poisons used for veterinary purposes.
Now the word "poison" in ordinary use has a pejorative sense, but, in the context of this Bill, any substance can be scheduled as a poison and thereafter comes within the ambit of the Bill. The Minister points out that, as the law stands, a preparation like penicillin is not scheduled as a poison. There is a wide variety of other antibiotics—acromycin, aureomycin—and the list continues continually to grow. I can well imagine at some subsequent date a strong case being made to schedule all antibiotics. I can well imagine Deputy Dr. Browne painting lurid pictures for us of septicaemic infection raging through children's hospitals because a resistant strain of bacilli had developed through too frequent and casual contact with antibiotics. We are all weary of the stories surrounding the staphylococcus that has grown up with penicillin and now, in the fifth and sixth generation, bids defiance to it. It is argued that in some cases none of the newly discovered antibiotics will effectively control this resistant strain. Very probably, there is a great deal of truth in these stories, but they have little or no relevance to veterinary circumstances. You do not keep pigs in a hospital ward. In any case, the pig is fated to live, by its nature, for no more than 24 weeks; it is born to die and be converted into bacon.
What is the purpose of bringing in this power to control the use of poisons in their veterinary application? I can well understand the strict control of drugs of addiction, such as the derivatives of morphia. I can well understand the control of drugs in relation to which casual contact can do irreparable damage. I can understand their being controlled for all purposes. I fail to see why there should be a restriction on the use of poisons for veterinary purposes specifically set out in this Bill and including a power to make regulations prohibiting, restricting or controlling the use of these poisons. The apprehension rightly entertained, I think, by the agricultural community is that gradually we will be faced with regulations which will, in effect, put an obligation upon the farmer to hire a vet on each occasion on which he wishes to use one of these preparations. The cost of doing that will be simply prohibitive and the only result of it will be that the farmer will let the animal die.
The Minister may say: "But these preparations you have in mind will never be scheduled as poison." That is the question. All we suggest here is that where they are scheduled as poisons for the purpose of this Bill, which, after all, is an omnibus Bill for the general control of poisons, there should be no restrictions where they are intended for use only with animals. If the Minister says that, apart from what are technically defined poisons, there may be other substances which are of so dangerous a character that they must be controlled absolutely, such as heroin or morphia, I would be prepared to consider a proposal that there should be a special schedule of these substances rigidly controlling them for all purposes—we ought, of course, to know what they are—but that would be a very different proposition from the general proposition that there should be power here to regulate or prohibit, restrict or control, the use of substances scheduled as poisons under the general powers of this Bill. If we delete the word "veterinary" I think a great deal of the legitimate apprehension of the agricultural community will be removed. I urge the Minister, at least experimentally, to make that deletion and see how it works.
