Your guide to Pharmacy Law and Ethics
Learn about the rules for advertising and promoting medicines, ensuring compliance with UK regulations and ethical standards.
Homeopathic and herbal medicines are distinct categories of products with different legal frameworks, regulatory requirements, and evidential standards. It is important to distinguish between them in order to apply the correct legal and professional approach.
Homeopathic products:
Herbal products:
The advertising of veterinary medicines in the United Kingdom is tightly regulated under the Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013 (VMR), as amended, and guided by the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD). These laws and guidelines ensure that any promotion of animal medicines is accurate, responsible, and directed only at appropriate audiences. Non-compliance with the VMR’s advertising rules is an offence, enforceable by the VMD (gov.uk). Below, we summarize the key legal requirements for advertising veterinary medicines – including what counts as an advertisement, the rules for advertising to the general public vs. to professionals, and special provisions for different medicine categories (POM-V, POM-VPS, NFA-VPS, AVM-GSL).
Under UK law, “advertising” of a veterinary medicine is defined very broadly. It includes any activity related to a veterinary product that is intended to promote the sale, supply, prescription or use of that product (gov.uk). This covers both direct and indirect promotion, whether done for profit or not. In practice, nearly any promotional communication about a vet medicine can be an advertisement, including:
Crucially, this definition applies equally to electronic media (websites, social media) as to traditional media (gov.uk). Even content like forum posts or social media content created by a company can count as advertising if it promotes a product. Customer testimonials used in marketing are also considered advertising claims of the company if they imply medicinal effects (gov.uk, gov.uk).