diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index fa91d79..3ef7a1f 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -78,6 +78,7 @@ dependencies = [
     "thop>=0.1.1", # FLOPs computation
     "pandas>=1.1.4",
     "seaborn>=0.11.0", # plotting
+    "packaging", # general utilities
     "ultralytics>=8.2.64"
 ]
 
diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index af57089..715b36d 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@ seaborn>=0.11.0
 # openvino-dev>=2023.0  # OpenVINO export
 
 # Deploy ----------------------------------------------------------------------
+packaging  # Migration of deprecated pkg_resources packages
 setuptools>=70.0.0 # Snyk vulnerability fix
 # tritonclient[all]~=2.24.0
 
diff --git a/utils/general.py b/utils/general.py
index efc0112..67839eb 100644
--- a/utils/general.py
+++ b/utils/general.py
@@ -28,8 +28,8 @@ from zipfile import ZipFile, is_zipfile
 
 import cv2
 import numpy as np
+import packaging
 import pandas as pd
-import pkg_resources as pkg
 import torch
 import torchvision
 import yaml
@@ -425,7 +425,7 @@ def check_python(minimum="3.8.0"):
 
 def check_version(current="0.0.0", minimum="0.0.0", name="version ", pinned=False, hard=False, verbose=False):
     """Checks if the current version meets the minimum required version, exits or warns based on parameters."""
-    current, minimum = (pkg.parse_version(x) for x in (current, minimum))
+    current, minimum = (packaging.version.parse(x) for x in (current, minimum))
     result = (current == minimum) if pinned else (current >= minimum)  # bool
     s = f"WARNING ⚠️ {name}{minimum} is required by YOLOv5, but {name}{current} is currently installed"  # string
     if hard: