A leading independent retailers association is calling on the government to halt plans that could remove common flea treatments from pet shop shelves, warning the move would damage high street businesses and leave pet owners facing higher costs.

Bira, which works with over 6,000 independent retailers across the UK, is urging the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) to carry out a full retail impact assessment before any decision is made to reclassify imidacloprid and fipronil-based spot-on flea treatments. Under current proposals, these products would be removed from general sale in pet shops and restricted to vets, pharmacists and specially qualified persons.

Andrew Goodacre (above), CEO of Bira, The British Independent Retailers Association, said: “Independent pet shops are community assets. They provide knowledgeable, affordable, accessible service to pet owners, often for routine products that owners have relied on for years. Removing flea treatments from their shelves, through a regulatory process that has involved no retail impact assessment and no meaningful consultation with our sector, is simply wrong.”

Independent pet retailers, many of them family-run businesses serving their local communities for decades, rely on flea treatments as a key purchase category that drives footfall and repeat custom. Bira warns that the costs involved in staff achieving the Suitably Qualified Person status required to continue selling these products under the proposed reclassification would be prohibitive for many small businesses.

The association is also raising serious concerns about the impact on pet owners. More than two million cats and dogs in the UK are not registered with a vet, in many cases because local practices are not accepting new patients. For those owners, independent pet shops are often the most accessible and affordable route to routine preventive care.

Mr Goodacre added: “This is a cost-of-living issue as much as it is a high street issue. Pet owners are already under financial pressure. Pushing a routine, widely available product into the veterinary channel, a sector the Competition and Markets Authority has just found to be charging consumers too much, will mean higher prices and fewer choices for ordinary families trying to look after their animals.”

Bira is not opposing action on environmental concerns linked to the chemicals involved, but points out that reclassification would do nothing to address the wastewater pathway identified in recent research, since vet-prescribed versions of the same products follow the same route into the water system. The association is calling for any proportionate response to the environmental evidence to be separated from decisions that would transfer a valuable product category away from independent retail.

Bira is calling for a full retail impact assessment, formal consultation with trade bodies representing affected retailers, and recognition of the role independent pet shops play in providing accessible, responsible advice to their communities.