The Taipei District Court has found a veterinarian criminally liable for using banned veterinary medicines during chemotherapy on a Maltese dog.
A man surnamed Lin (林) had his dog, named “Angel,” undergo surgery followed by a 12-week chemotherapy regimen at the Eden Animal Hospital in Taipei at the end of 2021 to treat a mast cell tumor.
However, Angel died of acute renal failure in January the following year.
Photo courtesy of the pet owner surnamed Lin
Lin suspected that Angel’s death was caused by an overdose of toceranib, a tumor-targeted drug that is banned for veterinary use in Taiwan.
Lin said the veterinarian administered the banned drug to his dog without his consent and continued the therapy despite severe side effects, adding that the medicine could have been counterfeit, citing its suspicious sources.
In 2022, Lin sought help from then-Democratic Progressive Party lawmaker Kao Chia-yu (高嘉瑜), who raised the issue during a legislative session, and demanded that the then-council of agriculture explain why it had tolerated the illegal use of banned veterinary drugs that “resulted in the death of a dog.”
Her accusations drew criticism from other pet owners and veterinarians, citing the drug’s legality in other countries and that the use of such medicines in Taiwan was often a practical necessity in the absence of alternative treatments.
The incident prompted Kao to advocate for the liberalization of restrictions on veterinary drug imports, while Lin faced a backlash from many Internet users and continued to gather evidence to file a lawsuit against the hospital.
Last year, the hospital’s former superintendent Kao Mao-jen (高茂仁) and veterinarian Hung Yi-ping (洪一平) were convicted of selling banned veterinary medicines, contravening Article 35 of the Veterinary Drugs Control Act (動物用藥品管理法).
The judge in the ruling said Kao and Hung should be held responsible for disrupting the veterinary medicine management system by selling the banned therapy.
In their defense, Kao and Hung said the veterinary therapy was specifically developed to treat mast cell tumors and was not legally available in Taiwan at the time, as no supplier had submitted an application for its importation.
Given that defendants used and sold the therapy in an effort to treat the dog’s disease and admitted wrongdoing, they were given the minimum statutory penalty — a four-month prison sentence, convertible to a fine of NT$1,000 per day, along with two years’ probation, the judge said, adding that they were also required to attend two sessions of a legal education class.
Their conviction made Lin the first person in Taiwan to receive a NT$150,000 monetary reward from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency for reporting the use of banned veterinary drugs.
Lin said that his objection was not to the legal approval of toceranib in Taiwan, but to the use of unapproved, potentially counterfeit medicine from a suspicious source.
The hospital said there was no alternative to toceranib in Taiwan and their prescribed dosage was safe, but imatinib, a legally approved tumor-targeting drug, was available at the time, Lin said. He thanked the court for its ruling.
Kaohsiung Animal Protection Office consultant and attorney Chin Jui-yun (秦睿昀) on Friday said that Lin’s case took place before the launch of the veterinary drug import project, which now allows veterinarians to legally import and use medications unavailable in Taiwan by registering their import plans with the Taiwan Veterinary Medical Association.
Chin also urged the Ministry of Agriculture to amend the law by adding an exclusion clause, which he said would help prevent veterinarians from unintentionally contravening the law.
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