What’s Driving Canada’s Veterinary Drug Shortage and Why it Matters
by Andrea Bedford, Bovine Veterinarian
In Canada, the veterinary community is ringing alarm bells.
In late November, the national body representing veterinarians, the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA), issued a stark warning: Veterinarians across the country are facing severe shortages of essential drugs, including antibiotics, sedatives, vaccines, and other core animal-health products.
Tracy Fisher, president of the CVMA, warns that without reliable access to these medications, veterinarians cannot properly do their jobs, and animals suffer. They are asking both federal and provincial governments to address the issue. This is not a problem confined to one sector of the profession. According to the CVMA, shortages are affecting companion animal and livestock practices alike, raising concerns not only about animal welfare but also about food safety and stability.
Regulatory Forces behind the Drug Shortage
Medications that once formed the backbone of routine veterinary care are now increasingly unavailable, disrupting treatment decisions across species and practice types. Antibiotics, anesthetics and sedatives, vaccines, and other foundational drugs are among those becoming difficult or impossible to source.
Regulatory changes appear to be a central driver. In 2017, Health Canada imposed new inspection standards requiring manufacturing facilities in other countries to be inspected by Canadian officials. This has increased the burden on companies supplying the Canadian market. For some manufacturers, the cost of these inspections has outweighed the benefit of maintaining approval in a relatively small market.
As a result, Canada has seen a steady erosion of veterinary drug availability. CVMA estimates suggest up to 40% of medications previously accessible to Canadian veterinarians are no longer on the market. While some of these products remain available in the US and elsewhere, Canadian clinics are unable to legally source them, leaving practitioners with fewer and often less-ideal options.
“We’ve lost 40% of the medications that we used to have in the 1980s,” Fisher says. She believes Canada should license products if they have been approved in two other reliable countries with strong safety regulations. “[The drugs] already have the standards met in Europe, Great Britain, and the US. Eliminate some of the red tape and bureaucratic processes that are holding up some of these things.”
Why Canada’s Crisis Matters to Global Veterinary Medicine
For veterinary professionals outside Canada, this offers a cautionary example of how quickly a stable system can unravel when regulatory pressure, economics, and global supply chains collide.
Veterinary pharmaceuticals rely on multinational manufacturing networks and imported active pharmaceutical ingredients. When compliance costs rise or markets shrink, manufacturers might quietly exit. Once a supplier disappears, alternatives are
often limited or nonexistent. Canada’s experience shows how vulnerable veterinary medicine can be when redundancy is low.
Drug shortages also create clinical consequences. When firstline therapies vanish, veterinarians must adapt protocols, rely on substitutions, or delay treatment entirely. In livestock systems, these gaps can ripple outward, affecting herd health, productivity, and food supply chains. Sustained shortages risk broader impacts beyond the clinic, including public confidence in animal health systems.
What US Veterinarians Should Take from This
The US might not have experienced shortages on Canada’s scale, but the underlying pressures are familiar. Many veterinary drugs already come from a limited number of manufacturers, and global supply-chain disruptions have shown how quickly availability can change.
Canada’s situation is not a prediction of what will happen elsewhere, but it is a reminder of what could happen if market forces and regulatory frameworks drift out of balance. Monitoring availability trends, maintaining contingency plans for essential medications, and engaging in discussions around regulatory flexibility could help prevent similar disruptions.
Canada’s veterinary drug shortages are more than an inconvenience. They represent a systemic failure that developed gradually. For the broader veterinary community, the lesson is clear: Access to essential medications cannot be taken for granted. Paying attention now might be the best way to ensure shelves do not go bare elsewhere. Information on US animal drug shortages and how to report them can be found on FDA’s website.
