The Future of Food Supply Veterinary Medicine

What the FSVMC-Bayer Study Tells us and How Can AABP Use this Information?

Abstract

The Food Supply Veterinary Medical Coalition (FSVMC) was formed in 2004 with a mission to assure the public that food continues to be abundant, safe and wholesome by ensuring that veterinarians are appropriately involved throughout the food supply system. The premise of the Coalition is that food production is enhanced, both in safety and wholesomeness, when veterinarians are included in all steps of production and processing. Listed alphabetically, the following organizations are the founding members of the Food Supply Veterinary Medical Coalition (FSVMC): American Association of Avian Pathologists, American Association of Bovine Practitioners, American Association of Food Hygiene Veterinarians, American Association of Small Ruminants Practitioners, American Association of Swine Veterinarians, American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges, American Veterinary Medical Association, Association of Veterinary Consultants, and the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service. Although not officially a member, the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association was very supportive of this research program, and was instrumental in data collection in Canada.

This study was commissioned by the FSVMC in May 2004 to implement a far reaching research program to examine the demand and supply trends for food animal veterinarians and the issues shaping those trends. The study was funded by the FSVMC and a grant from Bayer Animal Health. Similar in spirit to earlier extensive research on the veterinary profession provided in the KPMG mega study and the Pew report, the final report, entitled "Estimating FSVM Demand and Maintaining the Availability of Veterinarians for Careers in Food Supply Related Disciplines in the United States and Canada" consists of over 1600 pages that describe many different studies on various facets of the supply and demand for food supply veterinarians. Representing 16 months of literature review, data collection and analysis, the entire report can be found at the following website: http ://www.avma.org/public_heal th/f svmc/fsvmc_toc.asp. Three summary articles have also been published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) that highlight the major findings from the research program. The first article deals with veterinary student career path attraction to food production medicine in the USA and Canada. The second article, examines career switching and the retention of food supply veterinarians in the career. The third article15 addresses the patterns of growing demand for food supply veterinarians. Each article contains recommendations to improve the profession based directly upon the results from this research.

The research program that examined demand issues from 2004 thru 2016 in food supply medicine was comprised of thirteen panels of experts who participated in a multiple-round Delphi forecasting exercise. The research program addressing career attraction and career retention issues consisted of 1 7 studies, seven focus group studies and ten surveys, which provided insight into FSVM career path attraction and retention in the United States and Canada. Unlike some previous studies, this study found that there will likely be a 4% to 5% yearly shortfall in bovine-interested veterinarians graduating from US and Canadian veterinary colleges over the next 10 years. As demand for these veterinarians will rise only a modest 1% per year, most of this shortfall will be due to a lack of supply of new bovine-interested veterinary college graduates. To alleviate this shortfall, multiple tactics were suggested to: increase the likelihood of recruiting bovine-interested veterinary students into veterinary college, create cattle interest in students already in veterinary college, help these students as they begin their careers post-graduation, and provide further ongoing support to prevent them from switching from bovine medicine in their first five years of practice.