Life Cycle of Our Products

It is our mission to develop products to improve animal welfare.

Product Development

We are committed to the responsible use and humane treatment of animals. We carefully consider the use of animals in research. However, occasionally it is necessary to conduct toxicology testing to achieve product registrations. The majority of the toxicology information can be derived from existing bibliographic data. When additional data is required by the regulators a third party Contract Research Organisation (CRO) will undertake the study on a minimum number of animals.

The following principles are applied in any trials which involve animals:

• animals should be treated humanely with greatest consideration given to their health and welfare and consistent with meeting the necessary scientific objectives; and
• all animal studies should only be performed after considering whether the numbers of animals can be reduced, replaced or the procedures refined to minimise distress.

Pharmacovigilance 

All employees, except manufacturing shop floor workers, receive pharmacovigilance training within one month of joining Dechra. This is then verified by the pharmacovigilance e-learning module on Delta. These employees undertake an annual pharmacovigilance refresher training. The pharmacovigilance training outlines the procedure that should be followed by all Dechra personnel if they are informed of a product complaint.

Any time that Dechra receives a report of an adverse event occurring after the administration of one of its products, the Company treats the report seriously and believes that it is Dechra’s obligation to review the case to determine whether its product may have caused or contributed to the adverse event. All suspect adverse reactions are reported to the appropriate regional regulatory authority.

Promotion of Products

We advertise and promote our products fairly using promotional materials which contain balanced, accurate and truthful information. We do not make false or misleading claims about our products.

Products

Our products can be divided into four categories: Companion Animal Products (CAP), Food producing Animal Products (FAP), Equine, and Nutrition. All are targeted at providing veterinary professionals with solutions for their customers’ needs.

CAP
This sector continues to grow due to increasing pet ownership, advances in better nutrition, increased competence in managing complex conditions by veterinarians, preventative healthcare and wellness and the increasing availability of more specialist pharmaceuticals. We have developed a strong position in providing specialist and clinically necessary novel products, especially in internal medicine and critical care products such as anaesthesia and analgesia, where we have a wide range providing the veterinarian with an optimal solution for every case. We also supply a range of products which complement these products in key therapeutic sectors where we are seen as the company of choice by many veterinarians.

FAP
The key driver for growth in FAP is a huge increase in the global demand for high quality animal protein and dairy products. Vaccines are the biggest growth sector of the veterinary market and are anticipated to continue to outgrow therapeutic treatments. There is also a growing awareness to the need for better animal welfare standards, including pain control during procedures such as pig castration and tail docking.  Our portfolio is positioned to match current best practice prescribing habits including our recent move into poultry vaccines.

Equine
We have developed a strong position in lameness and pain management with unique products that have superior efficacy compared to historic treatments.

Nutrition
Our focus is predominantly therapeutic diets which are not available for self-selection through supermarkets, and require advice from the veterinarian. There are very few competitors in this specialist sector of the pet food market and although we compete with huge global multinational companies, we are able to differentiate our position through the use of higher quality ingredients and through innovation.