The Rural Voice, 1986-08, Page 16could have both veterinary and
human applications.
Future projects at Vetrepharm
include experiments in the
biological control of pests and
diseases in plants. The goal,
McRae explains, is to develop a
product that would allow the plant
to kill pests like grasshoppers with
a protein that would then break
down and provide food for the
plant.
Although Vetrepharm is bring-
ing out about five new products
annually, products which often at-
tract worldwide attention, Graeme
McRae is sometimes frustrated by
the company's "credibility gap"
with the Canadian government.
That means, he says, that
Vetrepharm has to produce about
three times as much test data as the
multinational companies before
Ottawa will license a new product.
To overcome this "gap,"
Vetrepharm researchers are going
to publish more of their findings in
scientific journals "and then the
bureaucrats will accept our data at
face value," says McRae.
A second frustration for both
McRae and Alkemade is that
Vetrepharm has tried to be ethical
by selling its products only to
veterinarians and by refusing to
"dump" unsafe products on
foreign markets — policies not
always followed by the multina-
tional drug companies.
"Companies that you think are
big, ethical, moral companies are
selling products in developing
countries that they would never be
allowed to sell here," says McRae.
In Malaysia, for example, anti-
biotics were being marketed
without listing any withdrawal
times on the packages. School-
children, on a government-
sponsored milk program, soon
started showing side effects of
drug residues in the milk. The
result was that "the government
had to build its own dairy farm
and processing facility just to pro-
vide milk for the kids," McRae
notes. Now Malaysian officials
are watching Vetrepharm's
research into immunostimulants
with interest, hoping that the new
vaccines will eventually reduce
their country's reliance on anti-
biotics in treating cattle and pigs.
Not all of Vetrepharm's inven-
tions, however, have turned out to
be unqualified successes. Last fall,
McRae went to the Ag China '85
Mark Gaynor, one of the
research team at Vetrepharm's
Putnam -area farm. demon•
strates the bio-fermenta
machine. used in developing
new products to combat
animal diseases.
Exposition in China to interest
agricultural officials in a portable
veterinary lab, complete with
equipment and instructions, that
could be used on state farms. The
$70,000 laboratory, however, was
"a litte ahead of what Chinese vets
needed," says McRae.
This June, McRae, Alkemade
and others returned to China to
provide scientists there with some
much needed advice on manufac-
turing animal vaccines.
The Chinese vaccines, McRae
says, proved to be "really archaic,
out-of-date and very dangerous.
So what we're trying to do is quote
them on rebuilding their whole
vaccine facility and then going in
and bringing some of their scien-
tific staff here and taking vaccines
that they're working with now and
showing them how to make them
in a better way using the new
equipment...." Then Vetrepharm
will also send some of its resear-
chers to China to develop vaccines
for other diseases the Chinese
veterinarians aren't vaccinating for
now.
Travelling to exotic locales,
while it seems the stuff of dreams,
is far from unusual for McRae and
his staff. Fifty per cent of the com-
pany's sales are to the export
market, including countries such
as Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize,
Cuba, China, Zaire, Hong Kong,
and Malaysia. Each sale, McRae
says, was made by Vetrepharm
staff who personally visited the
country.
"If we could eliminate the
research and eliminate the travel,
we'd make some money," McRae
says facetiously.
In Canada, the firm employs
eight young salespeople, all with
degrees in either agriculture or
science, to market its products to
veterinarians across the country.
When Vetrepharm employees go
abroad, they find that Canada's
"network of embassies and sales
staff is second to none." The em-
bassy will make local hotel reserva-
tions, provide translators for
meetings with potential customers
and also provide commercial at-
taches to help with negotiations.
While McRae praises the sup-
port given to small businesses by
the government, he says Canadian
banks "are the most destructive
force" in the country's economy.
"The government, I think, is do-
ing a good job in trying to support
small businesses and come up with
job creation programs and the
banks are stifling it. And no one
can tell the banks what to do and
it's a shame."
"When we were banking with a
Canadian bank, we had personal
guarantees, we had the mother-in-
law almost having to be on the
block, the kids, the dogs,
everything. Foreign banks say,
hey, that's pointless, why put
somebody in that position. It's far
more productive when you don't
have those pressures, McRae says,
adding that Vetrepharm now deals
with a European bank.
Aside from our banks, McRae
finds Canada "a phenomenal jum-
ping off point for the world." He's
perplexed however, why Cana-
dians still suffer from "this terrible
inferiority complex" when the
country has such "tremendous
resources and talent." But then a
super salesman like McRae, who
dared to take on the multinational
drug companies, isn't likely to
understand any kind of an in-
feriority complex. ❑
14 THE RURAL VOICE