Online animal-medicine retailers have a website job to tackle after the Veterinary Medicines Directorate ended its voluntary Accredited Internet Retailer Scheme on 30 October. The replacement arrangements differ between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, so businesses should check the instructions they have received before changing their shop.
For a small veterinary practice, pharmacy or specialist retailer, this is a useful moment to bring the person responsible for medicine sales together with whoever maintains the website. A quick image swap alone may leave important details unchecked.
A new change for existing retailers
The VMD says the AIRS register has been removed and the old logo is no longer valid. In Great Britain, businesses should replace it with the VMD Registered Online Retailer logo. Northern Ireland has a separate common logo, which registered retailers must display on every webpage offering veterinary medicines for sale.
The regulator has written to retailers with instructions and the appropriate artwork. It advises businesses to check every selling website, update changed details and test the logo’s link to its register on both desktop and mobile.
This is a different development from June’s introduction of an online registration form. That earlier article addressed the application process. Existing retailers now need to review their live websites following the end of AIRS; older descriptions of that voluntary scheme should not be treated as current instructions.
Check the official guidance before editing
The current internet-sales guidance identifies POM-V, POM-VPS and NFA-VPS medicines as categories requiring online-retailer registration. It says registration is not needed for online sales of AVM-GSL medicines and products covered by Schedule 6. Businesses should check their actual range rather than assuming every pet product has the same requirements.
Where registration is required, a business must wait for confirmation before supplying those medicines online. The guidance also requires specified retailer information, a route for medicine-related queries to the VMD and a register link on the relevant parts of the website.
Use the original logo file supplied by the regulator. Its guidance explicitly warns against copying the illustration from the GOV.UK page. If the email or artwork is missing, ask the VMD for it. The current announcement and detailed guidance use slightly different wording for the retailer statement, so confirm the wording in your instructions if there is any doubt.
A practical handover for a small team
Start with a short inventory of the domains through which your business sells animal medicines. Give the person checking registration the same list as the website editor. That makes it easier to spot a second shop or an older trading site that might otherwise be missed.
Then review the customer journey. Open a category page, an individual medicine page and the mobile version of each. Check whether the intended information is visible, whether a footer disappears on smaller screens and whether the register link works after any cookie notice is closed. These are practical quality checks, not a substitute for the regulator’s requirements.
Keep a simple record of the pages tested, the changes made and who approved them. A dated screenshot and the original instructions can help a colleague understand the decision when the site theme or ecommerce supplier changes later.
Finally, give customer-facing staff a brief explanation of the change. Ask them to pass on questions they cannot answer rather than improvising claims about accreditation. If your establishment or product range creates uncertainty about which arrangements apply, resolve that with the VMD before signing off the update.
