Legislation Updates Across the Animal Health and Veterinary Space

In the March 2026 issue of Animal Health News & Views, Mark Cushing and Loren Breen share what Animal Policy Group is seeing in statehouses this session. Each year the firm sifts through more than 10,000 bills across the veterinary, pharmacy, animal welfare, and pet care space, closely tracking around 2,000 of them. Even with shorter even-year sessions and 2026 elections in the mix, some states are introducing record numbers of bills. The article highlights four trends.

Telemedicine legislation continues to climb, with introductions this year doubling 2024’s total. Six states are looking to join the nine that already allow a veterinarian to establish a relationship through a telemedicine appointment, while early adopters Arizona and Florida are back with bills to increase prescription lengths. Georgia has returned to amend last session’s restrictive law, which inadvertently harmed access to pet poison control in the state.

Corporate ownership bills are low in volume but drawing outsized attention, following human healthcare’s lead. Fifteen states had enacted some form of healthcare transaction review law by the end of 2025, and a Colorado bill giving the Attorney General review power over mergers and acquisitions for both human and veterinary healthcare entities is the one to watch.

On the veterinary technician front, licensing remains a patchwork across states. Florida has reintroduced bills to license techs and expand what they can do, and is also running a mid-level professional bill that has crossed over, while New Jersey, Ohio, Kentucky, and Arizona all have tech legislation moving. In pharmacy, Florida passed a bill requiring signed client acknowledgment of prescription options and posted signage about pharmacy choice, while prescription monitoring database legislation has slowed given the challenges of implementing it in veterinary medicine.