There are several different levels of legislation:
•Acts of Parliament - must be discussed and debated before being passed by Parliament. The modern tendency is for them to contain general outlines of the legislation with the details hidden within
•Subsidiary legislation (usually Regulations in NZ) These have to be laid before Parliament (after they come into force) but are not subject to the same (any?) scrutiny and debate. Politicians like these because they give them control over the details of the operation of the law and minimise public debate. They are still law.
•Codes of Conduct such as the NZVA policies are not generally legally binding but are well worth following. If the worst happens and you end up in court, it is useful to be able to claim that you were doing what a consensus of the profession believed should be done. There are lots of grey areas where the law is not defined and the test of legality is likely to be what the rest of the profession consider reasonable.
Successive NZ governments have become very keen on Codes of Conduct, since these are written by the organisations being regulated and the government does not have to pay someone to write them. If they have too many unintended effects they can always be quietly abandoned without troubling Parliament. Many CoPs now have the same status as regulations, ie, they are law.
For instance, the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Act (1997) section 75 says that the government can make regulations to cover all aspects of veterinary medicines, the Agricultural Compounds and Veterinary Medicines Regulations (2001) say that vets can use human medicines in animals under their care provided that a suitable code of practice is followed, and the NZVA Code of Practice for the Discretionary Use of Human and Veterinary Medicines by Registered Veterinarians specifies the conditions of use of human medicines in animals which vets must follow.
Overview
Acts of Parliament
Prescriptions
Labelling, storage, compounding, dispensing and disposal
Discretionary use
Adverse reactions
The future??
Warning!
Although New Zealand's legal system is based on the British system, there are differences in veterinary medicines legislation. Most English-speaking countries have similar legislation, but there can be significant differences in the details!
The full text of NZ legislation can be found here.
