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* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

Is the Australian government holding back animal health innovation? Is the Australian government holding back the animal health sector? Today’s episode may be a little controversial because I’m going to share what I keep hearing from the pharmaceutical companies and animal health manufacturers across Australia.

This isn’t about getting rid of regulation or dropping our safety standards. It’s about whether the current system has become so slow, expensive, and difficult that businesses are deciding Australia simply isn’t worth it. And if that’s happening, we aren’t only missing out on products, we could be missing out on jobs, investment, research, and better options for vets, farmers, pet owners, and animals.

So here are my two cents on what needs to change.

Welcome to The Animal Health Show by S8. I’m your host, Shannon Wood, and this is where we talk about the latest trends shaping the animal health industry. We’ll be sitting down with leading voices from across the sector, sharing practical insights to help you grow your animal health business, build a stronger team, or land your dream role.

If you’re looking for your next dream job, or you’re ready to hire your next standout team member, reach out to us at S8 Expert Recruitment Solutions. You’ll find our contact details in the show notes for today’s episode. All right, let’s talk animal health Welcome to The Animal Health Show by S8. I’m your host, Shannon Wood, and this is where we talk about the latest trends shaping the animal health industry. We’ll be sitting down with leading voices from across the sector, sharing practical insights to help you grow your animal health business, build a stronger team, or land your dream role.

If you’re looking for your next dream job or you’re ready to hire your next standout team member, reach out to us at S8 Expert Recruitment Solutions. You’ll find our contact details in the show notes for today’s episode. All right, let’s talk animal health

I wanna start this episode by making something really clear. I’m not here to have a crack at regulation for the sake of it, and I’m definitely not suggesting that we should wave every animal health product through without checking it properly. We need regulation. We need strong safety standards.

We need to make sure products are safe for animals, safe for people, and safe for the environment. But I also think we need to be able to ask a fair question. Has the system become so slow and difficult that it’s now holding the industry back? The reason I wanted to talk about this is that I keep hearing the same thing from animal health manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies operating in Australia.

This isn’t one annoyed business having a whinge because an application took longer than it wanted. It’s a theme that keeps coming up in conversations with different companies, and when you hear the same concern over and over again, you have to pay attention.

What I’m hearing is that the APVMA is under a huge amount of pressure and may simply not have enough people to keep up with the work. I’m not only talking about scientists and people doing the technical reviews, I’m hearing concern about the staff numbers across administration and support as well. If there aren’t enough people to move applications through the system, answer questions, and make decisions, the backlog keeps getting bigger and products take longer to reach the market.

Now, I wanna be careful here because I’m sharing what businesses in the industry are telling me. I’m not sitting inside the APVMA, and I don’t know exactly what’s happening behind the scenes. But from the outside, there seems to be a very real problem how long things are taking. And the effect on these delays spreads much further than the regulator or the company waiting for an answer.

Every delay can mean a treatment, vaccine, or new piece of technology takes longer to reach the vets, farmers, pet owners, and animals that could use it. It means businesses that already put a lot of time into developing a product has to wait even longer before it can sell it and start earning that money back.

It means plans get pushed out, budgets get tighter, and hiring decisions get put on hold. And this is where it becomes more than annoying pile of paperwork.

It starts affecting the growth of the whole industry. The bigger global companies can normally handle delays. They have large budgets. They sell products across more countries. They have more room to wait. They may not like it, but they can absorb it. A smaller Australian business or a startup doesn’t have the same breathing room.

If it has spent years developing something and then has to wait through a long, uncertain approval process, that can put a huge amount of pressure on the business. Cash keeps going out while the product still can’t be sold. The team still needs to be paid. Research and testing have already cost money.

Investors want to know when the product will reach the market. At some point, what started as a great Australian idea can become too expensive or too hard to keep pushing forward. That doesn’t only hurt the company, it can affect researchers and universities because there is less reason to invest in new ideas if getting them to the market is gonna be such a battle.

It can affect local manufacturing, it can affect jobs and regulatory affairs, technical services, quality assurance, sales, marketing, and at the other end of the chain, vets, farmers, and pet owners can end up with fewer options. I know there are global businesses with large product ranges that choose not to register some of those products here in Australia.

The Australian market is relatively small, and if the costs, time, and work involved in registration are too high, some companies look at the numbers and decide it simply isn’t worth doing.

That’s the part I think we need to take seriously. A product can be available in other parts of the world, but Australia may never have access to it because the business case for its bringing it here doesn’t stack up. Vaccines are one of the clearest examples I hear about. There are products available overseas that don’t make it to Australia because of the process costs too much or it takes too long for the size of the opportunity.

I’ve also seen it with premium nutrition products and other new ideas across animal health.

Companies make a choice about where to spend their time and money, and Australia doesn’t always win. Of course, Australia is different from other countries. We have our own wildlife and environmental and biosecurity, and those things absolutely need to be taken into account.

A product being approved somewhere else doesn’t automatically mean we should copy and paste the decision here without looking at our own conditions. But surely there’s a middle ground. If a product’s already been carefully reviewed and been approved by a trusted regulator in a major overseas market, do we really need to start every part of the process from scratch?

Could we use the work that’s already been done, focus our attention on things that are genuinely different in Australia, and create much faster path without lowering the standard?

To me, that seems like common sense. It isn’t about saying, “America approved it, she’ll be alright.” It’s about recognizing good evidence that already exists. So not doing the same work twice when there’s no good reason to. Does that make sense? Because when companies decide to bring products here, we lose more than the product itself.

W- we lose choice, we lose competition, and when only one or two suppliers are operating in a category, there’s less pressure on price. That can flow through to veterinary businesses, producers, farmers, pet owners, and ultimately the consumers. We can lose investment. If a global business is deciding whether to launch a product, set up a team, or put money into research, it will usually choose the market where it can move with some level of speed and certainty.

If Australia is known as a place where things take too long and cost too much, that investment goes elsewhere, and people will follow the investment. I speak with candidates who are excited by innovation and wanna work around new products, new science, and businesses that are moving quickly.

Australia has some excellent animal health companies and some very clever people, but there’s a feeling among some professionals that the bigger and more exciting opportunities are overseas because that’s where often the development and investments are happening.

Now, that should bother us because we have great researchers, universities, vets, scientists, and companies in this country. We have raw ingredients to build a stronger animal health sector. But if we make it too hard to turn an idea into a product and a real business, people will take those ideas, skills, and jobs somewhere else.

So is the problem too much regulation or regulation that isn’t working efficiently enough? Honestly, I think there’s a bit of both. Over time, we’ve become more and more focused on removing every possible risk. I understand why. Look, nobody wants to approve something that causes harm. But we also need to be honest that there is a cost when we make a system so cautious or so complicated that almost nothing moves.

Good regulation should protect people, animals, and the environment. It should stop unsafe products reaching the market, but it should also be able to make decisions in a reasonable amount of time. When businesses are waiting and waiting, when applications are stuck, when companies decide the country isn’t worth entering, the system stops being only a safeguard, it also becomes a roadblock.

The answer is not lower standards, and I wanna repeat, that is because it matters. Nobody in this industry wants dangerous or poorly tested products slipping through because we were in a hurry. The answer is keeping the standards high while making the process work better. If I could change things tomorrow, the first thing I would do is to make sure that APVMA has enough people to do a job.

If staffing is one of the main reasons applications are backing up, then fund the roles, hire the people, give the organization the support it needs. It’s a national regulator doing work that affects animal health, food production, farming, business growth, biosecurity. Making sure it can actually do that properly should be a priority.

The second thing I’d look at is faster path for products that have already been approved by trusted regulators overseas. Australia should still review the parts that matter here, particularly our own environment and biosecurity issues. But we should be able to use existing evidence and avoid needless double handling.

The third thing is technology. Surely there are parts of the process that could be handled more quickly with better systems, better data management, and yes, AI. I’m not suggesting we use ChatGPT whether a vaccine is safe or call it a day. Clearly, that would be ridiculous, but technology can help sort documents, review large amounts of information, track applications, and take some of that basic admin off people’s plates.

That leaves skilled staff with more time for work that genuinely needs their judgment.

I know the strongest argument against speeding things up is safety. People will say that Australia is unique, the risks are real, and the extra checking takes time. And if they’re right, those concerns are valid. But asking for a faster and better run system is not the same as asking for an unsafe one.

The industry is asking the government to turn a blind eye. From what I’m hearing, businesses want clearer steps, enough people to process the work, and decisions made within a fair amount of time. That doesn’t feel like an unreasonable ask. And I think this is the point That often gets missed. This isn’t the only pharmaceutical company problem.

It affects options available to vets. It affects what farmers and producers can use. It affects animal welfare. It affects the cost of products. It affects research, jobs, and whether Australia is seen as a place to build an animal health business.

We talk a lot about innovation in this country. We say we want to support Australian ideas, encourage local businesses, and create skilled jobs. That sounds great, but then we need a system that helps good ideas reach the market while still keeping people, animals, and the environment safe. At the moment, based on the conversations I’m having, I think the balance is off.

Australia may be making it harder than it needs to be, and we may not fully see what that is costing us because the products, investment, and jobs that goes elsewhere are much harder to count than the applications sitting in the backlog. So my question is this: Are we protecting Australia or are we starting to protect ourselves out of progress?

I’d genuinely love to hear what you think, particularly if you work in manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, veterinary, research, farming or regulation. Are you guys seeing these same delays? Do you think the current system has the balance right? And what do you think the government or the APVMA should be doing differently?

Send me an email, give me a call, and let me know. My details are in the show notes for today’s episode, and I’m sure there’ll be a lot of people who strongly agree with me and others who think I’ve got it completely wrong. And look, that’s okay. This is a conversation the industry should be having.

And don’t forget, S8 Recruitment Solution specializes in recruitment across animal health and animal nutrition sector. If you’re growing your team, replacing a key person, or trying to find someone with a hard-to-find industry experience, reach out to me. Again, you’ll find my details in the show notes or Google S8 Recruitment Solutions and give me a call.

Thanks so much for listening to The Animal Health Show. I’ll talk to you soon next time.

Thanks so much for tuning in to today’s episode of The Animal Health Show by S8. If you found the value in this conversation, please share it with your colleague, an industry mate, or on social media so we can keep the discussions moving across the sector. If you’d like to get in touch, all of our details are in the show notes for today’s episode.

I thank you for listening, and I look forward to chatting with you again in the fortnight

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio