As of December 1, 2018, you will need a prescription before buying a medically important antibiotic for livestock production.

Beef Production Specialist with Alberta Beef producers, Karin Schmid, says a lot of the antimicrobials we use are already prescription only, such as Draxxin.

"What this change will affect are things like your penicillin your tetracycline, scour boluses, sulfa drugs, those types of things, as well as the access to some raw in-feed product. So, if you're mixing Tylan, or chlortetracycline into feed on farm, you can no longer get that product from your feed mill."

Prescriptions are good for one year, and can include refills, Schmid says.

"If you're something like a big feedlot with a fairly regular schedule of usage, you can likely get that prescription to cover off that usage for a year. They've been doing that for sometime."

She says the important part is, to get a prescription you have to have a Veterinarian-Client-Patient-Relationship.

"That means not necessarily that your vet has to come out and examine every animal, but that they have a reasonable idea of what is going on at your place and your herd health protocols."

Schmid says the changes come from Health Canada, and will apply to all of Canada.

"Health Canada for sometime since the development of the framework around antimicrobials resistance in Canada in 2015, has been looking for ways to strengthen veterinary oversight over the way antimicrobials are used in Canada, as well as tighten up some of the regulatory procedures around that."

She says each province has jurisdiction over the distribution of the antibiotics.

"They (the Provinces) determine where those products can be sold, whether it's through a veterinary clinic, or a pharmacy, or if some products can be sold over the counter if they're not prescription. In Alberta, we have the authorized medicine sales outlets, which are places like UFA or farm supply stores, that could sell over the counter products, but it gets a little more complicated, because now all of those over the counter products are going to be prescription only, and the legislation around those outlets only permits them to sell over the counter antimicrobials."

You can visit the Beef Cattle Research Council's latest blog for more information.