The federal government of Canada through Health Canada has unwisely decided to stop the sale of various medications designed to help treat fish diseases in pet stores across Canada. This decision will greatly impact people's ability to treat diseases that are easily treated and will cause the unnecessary death of thousands of fish annually.

Fish for the aquarium trade are very prone to outbreaks of various diseases or parasites due the manner and processes in which they are brought from overseas and distributed throughout the various fish stores in Canada. Many of these diseases can have deadly consequences for the fish and often result in death if untreated.

In the past, responsible fish owners would purchase the necessary medication to treat diseases that showed up in their fish so to help mitigate loss or lessen the suffering of their aquatic pets. However, Health Canada has decided that people will require a vet's prescription to purchase any medication that could be used to treat fish diseases.

The necessity for people to spend 70 to 100 dollars to bring their fish to a vet so they can help treat their fish (some which only cost under 5.00) with a 10.00 medication is ridiculous and completely an unreasonably expectation. Most vets are not aware of fish diseases nor would they carry the necessary drugs to treat them. However, most fish diseases are well known to the fish hobbyist community and treatment of them is easy - if you have access to the proper medications.

Health Canada's move will cause the unnecessary death and suffering of thousands of animals a month.

Most of the medications that were used would be best described as being similar to the Polysporin antibiotic creams that you can buy at numerous locations across the county without a prescription. Others like Cupramine are not antibiotics, but have been proven to be extremely effective against external parasites such as Ich and marine velvet that will ravage and destroy entire tanks of fish if untreated.

This petition is designed to raise awareness of this move by the federal government so that it will reverse this decision that will kill thousands of animals unnecessarily every month. The federal government's decision will allow diseases to destroy entire tanks of fish that people have lovingly tended to for years and some consider family members.

We, the undersigned, demand that Health Canada reverse this ruling and meet with people involved within the trade to discuss moving forward in a way that will allow people to treat their fish without having a vet's prescription to do so.