The British government has launched a formal consultation on whether flea and tick treatments for pets should be restricted to sale through vets and pharmacists only. At present any pet shop in the country can sell these products without any professional oversight. Ministers want to change that and the eight week review could result in a full restriction on over-the-counter access.
The core concern is environmental. When owners apply these treatments to their cats and dogs the chemicals travel through the animal's fur and eventually reach rivers and lakes. Scientists have found traces of two of the most widely used compounds in these products in the vast majority of British waterways. Fipronil showed up in 98 per cent of river and lake samples tested by the Environment Agency while imidacloprid appeared in 66 per cent of all samples. Both chemicals have been banned from agricultural use in the UK since 2018 but continue to flow into natural water through a route nobody originally anticipated: the family pet.
