VAMREG: what a Belgian vet has to register, and by when

Two registers, split by what the animal becomes

The line is whether the species enters the food chain. Get this wrong and you file the right data in the wrong place.

SANITEL-MED continues to carry antimicrobial use in food-producing species: cattle, pigs, veal calves for meat production, small ruminants, poultry and rabbits. Nothing there changed.

VAMREG is the new register for the non-food-producing side: horses, cats, dogs, fur animals such as foxes and mink, farmed fish, and other non-food-producing species. It was developed by the FAMHP and data collection started when it launched on 1 July 2026.

A mixed rural practice therefore reports on both sides of that line, often about the same farm.

Who has to report

VAMREG collects from retailers of veterinary medicines: veterinarians holding a veterinary depot, and pharmacists responsible for a public pharmacy. If you hold a depot and supply antimicrobials for horses, dogs or cats, you are in scope.

The reporting unit is the supply and use of antibiotics, not a summary you write at the end of the year. Which is why doing it from memory is the failure mode.

The deadline that is easy to get wrong

Reporting runs by quarter, and a quarter does not close at the end of the quarter. It closes on the 14th of the second month after it ends.

So Q1, ending 31 March, closes on 14 May. Q2, ending 30 June, closes on 14 August. Q3 closes on 14 November, and Q4 on 14 February. While the previous quarter is still open you can correct back into it; once it closes, only the current quarter remains editable.

That gap between the quarter ending and the quarter closing is the single most common source of a late scramble, because it feels like more time than it is.

How to stay ahead of it

1. Record at administration, not at deadlineThe dose that leaves the depot is both a stock movement and a register line. Capture it once, when it happens, from the batch.
2. Know which register each patient belongs toSpecies decides it. Software that keeps one patient registry across companion, equine and farm can route it for you; a species-pack product may not see the whole picture.
3. Reconcile before the 14th, not on itCheck the quarter in the first week of the closing month, while corrections are still possible in the previous quarter.
4. Ask your supplier whether they file or exportKeeping the register and transmitting it electronically are different capabilities. Make them say which they do.

Common questions