On 25 November 2016, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources, the Barnaby Joyce announced that the APVMA will be relocating its operation to Armidale in regional NSW in 2019.

An interim office was officially opened at 246 Beardy Street, Armidale on 27 April 2017 with an initial staff of two to liaise with the local Armidale community. The office also provides a base for staff from the Canberra office, including APVMA's transition team, to work out of when they travel to Armidale.

The move to Armidale will also involve a significant upgrade to the digital capacity and strategy for the APVMA. The move to a permanent office and transition of the full range of regulatory operations is expected to occur mid-2019.

In the mean-time the APVMA has already lost 25% of its staff as most staff have indicated that they are not moving to Armidale. This has resulted in significant delays in the APVMA processing applications.

Glyphosate

Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide worldwide. It's used in agriculture, the home garden, and for commercial applications.

In 2016, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) published a report that classified glyphosate as 'probably carcinogenic to humans'. This classification is based on a hazard assessment of the chemical rather than a risk assessment. The APVMA is aware that several concerns have been raised in relation to the ongoing safety, registration and use of glyphosate in Australia as a result of this classification.

The APVMA recently conducted a comprehensive review of the IARC assessment report and other relevant scientific material and concluded that there is currently no scientific reason to reconsider the registration of glyphosate.

It is the APVMA's position that all registered glyphosate products are safe provided they are used as per the label instructions.

APVMA Compliance activity

The APVMA conducts compliance activities to ensure regulatory compliance of products in the market place. Recent compliance activity has shown that a range of legitimate horse products are available in Australia that do not require registration. Horse products that do not make therapeutic claims and those expressly excluded from regulation, like excluded nutritional digestives (END), do not require APVMA registration.

However, import surveillance undertaken between November 2016 and May 2017, revealed that over 17 per cent of those AgVet products inspected at the border were found to be unregistered horse products and therefore illegal to import and supply in Australia.

These products in some instances made therapeutic claims to alleviate or treat conditions in horses (i.e. laminitis, colic), or claim to enhance the physical qualities of your horse (i.e. performance enhancing). Veterinary horse products that make these types of claims require APVMA registration.

Recent advice issued to retailers and consumers by the APVMA is intended to raise awareness of how people can identify when a product should be registered, where to find the APVMA approval number on the product and how to report potential non-compliance.