Being a food animal veterinarian can offer a broader range of opportunities than the average American might think. We can shuffle papers for a big behemoth of a swine operation, sit behind a desk in Washington D.C., condemn carcasses at a CAFO, manage herds for 1,500-head dairy facilities, consult with family-run farms as they attempt to go organic or introduce chicken fanciers to the sweet mysteries of food safety.
One size does not fit all. The kind of species, size of operation and scope of duties can vary enormously. Which is a very good thing considering that I still harbor high hopes of a future career in food animal medicine...
...And yet I don’t see myself donning coveralls and a plastic sleeve as I preg check cow after cow. Nor do I fancy an avian pathology position or a regulatory post within the Federal government.
Same goes for most veterinary students. We’ve discussed the issues surrounding the dearth of food animal veterinarians here before and we concluded the following:
1-Vet students don’t tend to want to go rural (where most food animal jobs live)
- Not when they grew up in suburbia (as did 95% of students these days)
- Even if they did want to move out to the sticks, their spouses don’t...
- Or rather, their spouses can’t afford to given that non-ag jobs tend to be scarcer further out.
2-Then there’s the issue of lifestyle to consider:
- is a food animal career female friendly?
- family friendly?
- new grad friendly?
3-And the question of future opportunities (including future pay)
- because some large animal veterinarians make a very good living but it doesn’t compare to what a board-certified neurologist makes...
- nor does the range of future options for a cow vet in Vermont seem so vast as for a small animal intern in New York City.
4-Finally, there’s the obvious to consider: When an estimated quarter of this year’s crop of veterinary candidates has considered going vegetarian due to animal welfare concerns, is it not obvious that conventional food animal medicine is no longer in touch with the rest of the veterinary profession?
All of which makes for a scary future when it comes to food safety, biosecurity and public health in general. The small numbers of students graduating with an interest in food animal medicine likely means non-vets will take on these roles.
It’s not an easy problem to solve. There are a whole lot of issues we have to consider when it comes to filling the shoes of the current generation of food animal practitioners. Good thing is, it looks as if veterinary medicine’s on track to start addressing them.
Places like my alma mater are working on novel animal welfare initiatives that address swine confinement issues, for example. The Pew Commission has raised eyebrows and dollars for more of the same. Students with animal welfare backgrounds are starting to see food animal medicine––rather than shelters––as a place to make their stand.
But that’s not enough, you may say. Rural life is still an obstacle. The lifestyle issue is huge. Even if food animal welfare were not a big concern, we’d be in full-blown vet shortage within a decade. And we desperately need veterinarians to remain in the food animal game if we’re to keep our food supply safe. So what’s it going to take?
In the past, I’ve despaired over this point. I’ve worried that nothing could make a difference as long as the paradigm remained the same. I’ve fretted over the potential influx of corporate lackey paraprofessionals to replace veterinarians and the pharmacy industry-style downgrading of the veterinarian’s role in the context of industrial animal agriculture. I’ve even been known to say: “Money can’t fix this problem.”
But that’s where I seem to have been wrong.
The Federal government appears to be poised to put it’s money where its mouth is. Lots of it. More of it than I ever thought possible. Enough of it to raise my hopes that food animal medicine will continue to be managed by veterinarians. Veterinarians who might’ve otherwise eschewed a cow’s backside and outright rejected a challenging career in poultry pathology.
So what’s this game-changing deal? Up to $100,000 in debt relief over a period of four years. That’s $25 K a year for vets who spend up to 50% of their working lives furthering food animal medicine. That’s what’s being discussed. And, if approved, it’ll affect graduates as soon as 2010. In fact, it’s not just for new graduates. It’s for anyone with student debt remaining on their books. As in, people like ME.
Here’s where the optimist in me does a jig. Because this kind of money for food animal medicine means a broader range of veterinarians willing to enter a world formerly reserved only for the rural in origin and those seemingly pre-destined to step into a dying breed’s shoes. With this kind of money a fundamental change in animal agriculture––though far from assured––seems far more attainable than ever before.
It’s exciting, really. Enough so that I’ve taken to contemplating the possibility of a career in food animal medicine far sooner than I expected. Though I always knew I’d be headed this way, I didn’t expect to be tempted to throw my hat in the ring so soon. But then, it’s no coverall-wearing, pickup-driving, manure-slinging food animal job I have in mind. Rather, I was hoping they’d pay off my loans for my denim-wearing, hybrid-driving, laptop-hefting brand of backyard food animal consulting.
Hey, it “furthers food animal medicine,” does it not? And God knows I could use about $25 to $50 K.
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This is a very wise choice by the US government if this is true. Although I am not a veterinarian, I have lived on very rural cattle ranches in Nebraska. The very few veterinarians live a pretty hard life. However, they are revered by the local ranchers as the most important figure in the community. Since they know all of the ranchers in the area, they are a great social resource as well. :)
Jason November 20th, 2009 11:07:27 AM
Good luck! After working for the feds for two years, and leaving after total frustration, I truly wish you luck!
The number of idiots who have to validate their jobs by telling you how to do yours is crazy. The people in charge who have no clue or experience but have contacts or have contributed to the right campaign is again, scary.
But if you can put up with the red tape and the idiocy and the corruption, the money is AWESOME!
I managed to stay for two years, and finally decided happiness and health was more important than my career.
But- seriously- I wish you well. I know what ever money the feds spend on you will be money well spent- which is a HUGE thing to say about ANY federal agency!
agadoresmama November 20th, 2009 11:33:51 AM
I'd consider the rural living a bonus!
Jen - Financial Planner in Atlanta November 20th, 2009 12:53:41 PM
Cool ... so our plans for the rural commune are back on? Your coast or mine?
Gina Spadafori November 20th, 2009 02:23:11 PM
I'm not a vet...but I don't think I could ever do it. Food animals are treated pretty horribly in this country, and I don't think I could live with that.
If you could guarantee working on an organic, free-range farm(s), I'd be all in. Unfortunately, there aren't very many of those left.
And, I am a vegetarian. :)
Erika November 20th, 2009 02:44:23 PM
Sure love reading your blog.. After a long, crazy, and impossible day, I needed a laugh..
Have a friend who was a breast surgical oncologist. Moved to a rural town in MO.. and is now practicing general surgery in a 25 bed hospital.. If you read her emails .. You'd be busting.. She is still getting over the culture shock after being out there for five years.. She still has a major need to escape to more populated area.. and basically you'd think she has cabin fever.. and it's not even winter..
There are plus sides.. People are more friendly.. The pace is slower..The government picked up some of her debt.. The salary is good.. and the air is cleaner.. She married a farmer, while out there.. so they both work.. and since I didn't mention that people are more polite.. It really is so..
I love visiting.. but Socks isn't invited, as people out there dogs are supposed to live outside.. and that they are dogs.. I keep trying to explain that Socks doesn't know he's a dog..
Barri November 20th, 2009 05:12:47 PM
I've wondered on occasion what vet school must be like for those destined to be food animal vets. I would think they are so few & far between, and certainly a different kind of person from your garden variety small animal practitioner....
Julie in OH November 20th, 2009 05:45:44 PM
I don't have a complete picture of the work involved , but rural Vermont is gorgeous! I sure would like to live there!
Barb A./NH November 20th, 2009 06:32:49 PM
Barri, There's some of us in rural MO that let our dogs inside. The neighbors look at you funny but... I had great fun loading mine up and taking them to the Wal-Mart in town too :)
PJB November 20th, 2009 07:27:12 PM
I would love to see this in place, but past programs promising debt relief for food animal veterinarians have been virtually untouched at the state level and I don't feel this program will get off the ground any more than the last one. That's not to say I wouldn't love to see this. I'm a early-on 2nd career pre-vet student with my applications in and hoping to hear good news in the next few months. I want to become that large animal vet that's arming cows a good part of the time, and I'm a 24 year old female with an electrical engineering degree.
Stereotypes aside, the fact of the matter is that veterinary schools have upped the entrance requirements to exclude those people that would make EXCELLENT food animal vets. These are the kids that know pigs or cattle or chickens inside out and backwards but are not 4.0+ biochemistry rockstars with kick-a** internships and research experience. These are kids who know these animals, want to live in a rural area, and want to work with producers. Instead, they get degrees in animal science and their invaluable practical experience is directed towards less lofty pursuits. Furthermore, the type of students that veterinary schools are accepting are not the ones who want to do this type of work. They are largely small animal oriented. Even worse are the students who go to veterinary school knowing that they just want to go into research and not practice. I believe there's a time and a place for that, but taking up the unfairly scarce number of seats in veterinary schools for students who do not wish to treat animals is unfair to those that do. I wish that AAVMC and the schools would recognize the need to expand the number of seats in veterinary schools in the US. The complacency and lack of follow through on these issues is leaving American agriculture and food safety in serious peril.
future cow vet November 20th, 2009 11:13:23 PM
Dr. Khuly -- As a hopelessly gooey-hearted vegetarian, I do hope you do take a position in food animal veterinary medicine. God knows the industry needs skilled vets with compassion. Layer on your prodigious talent as a communicator, and I would see hope for genuine improvement in the treatment of food animals.
oh holland November 20th, 2009 11:17:08 PM
PBJ, Thanks for the tip regarding taking the dog to Walmart.. There are times that I'd love to run in, but have Socks with me. and I don't like leaving him in the car..
I started out with one friend in MO.. and now have a bunch of wonderful friends from there... and have gotten into missionary work.. I've also learned a lot.. Knowledge that you wouldn't find in a book..
barri November 21st, 2009 07:23:41 AM
future cow vet: I share your concern over the discrepancy in work-to-live food animal students and the all-consumed, competitive companion animal/research oriented/uber-mentsch students. It's hard to run a program where the needs of both student populations must be met.
Nonetheless, I don't think it's fair to limit veterinary school to the clinically inclined alone, as you're suggesting. Business-minded, legally-oriented and basic research-driven students MUST be included if the program is to produce a well-rounded veterinary profession that's capable of influencing a variety of industries, government policy and other crucial spheres.
Without this multi-pronged approach, the veterinary profession would soon run into the same problem pharmacists did. What's their profession like now? Purely technical. Limited. Lower paying. Less challenging. Less influential. It's sad to see what's happened to a vibrant profession due to industry pressures––and because the profession was too short-sighted to defend itself.
Dr. Patty Khuly November 21st, 2009 07:41:49 AM
Barri, I never had a problem taking my dogs into rural Wal-Marts. They tend to know you might be 30 miles from home and it kinda goes with the friendly and tolerant thing, as long as the dog is well mannered and it's a quickie trip. Good luck with the missionary work, there's much to be done.
Going the way of pharmacists... OH, PLEASE, NO!
PJB November 21st, 2009 09:58:22 AM
"Even worse are the students who go to veterinary school knowing that they just want to go into research and not practice."
Ouch... who do you think are the people who keep our profession moving forward?
Megan November 21st, 2009 10:48:56 AM
Dr. Khuly, I have to apologize, I was a little frustrated last night and had just finished a heated conversation on this very subject. I agree that we do need a well-rounded and multi-disciplinary group of veterinarians. I just get very frustrated seeing talented people with animal science and life science knowledge, folks that would make excellent and desperately needed food animal veterinarians, get passed over for vet school admittance and look elsewhere. Especially in the wake of close friends and extremely over-qualified students taking 5+ years to get into Texas A&M because of increasing hoops to jump through for admittance. I just think that non-clinical seeking veterinary students, while neccessary, are pushing out students who want to practice veterinary medicine on animals. I'm not saying we don't need those folks, we surely do. They need to increase the number of seats, plain and simple, to be able to provide this kind of diversity while still producing sufficient numbers of clinical veterinarians.
future cow vet November 21st, 2009 10:50:28 AM
Future cow vet has it mostly right that schools are clueless about admissions and educating veterinarians for at least the past two decades. You might want to read Journal of Vet med education articles by Peter Eyre on Professing Change in 2001 and Engineering Veterinary Education in 2002 which lay out the reasons why veterinary education must abandon the cult of omnicompetence and innovate or only be seen as "doggie docs"
The one size fits all curriculum is not relevant to the present. The knowledge base is just too diverse and deep to have a program that tries to cover it all and produce basic practitioner in 4 yrs for a mythological doctor capable of treating all creatures great and small. I attended Georgia in the late 80s/early 90s with intention of becoming bovine/dairy yet there were not enough large operations of either type to allow me to be qualified to manage/treat any level of bovine operation. Back in that day I had some classmates with really good ag backgrounds whose time was wasted learning about small animal neurosurgery when they needed more training in food animal medicine and food safety on the farm. One of my surgery lab partners(with a BS in poultry science too) is an excellent poultry vet, and I am so glad he is not treating pets based on working with him as his lab partner. Similarly, I had other classmates go into lab animal medicine. I have excellent strengths in pathology and toxicology and should be working for a drug company in research. Sadly,there are not enough training opportunities even though the retirements in industry will produce shortages according to the college of vet pathologists.
There is actually an excess of veterinarians if you believe the supply studies produced by the economist Malcolm Getz in 1997 and the KPMG in 1999. The problem is that veterinary academia is incapable of allocating the human capital and training in any efficient way. There is an excess of small animal practitioners because of admission policies and the curriculum that has now been dominated by companion animal medicine. Limiting admission to particular tracks like food animal, companion animal and a research track including lab animal and pathology among others is the answer of Eyre and a few other retired deans. Of course it means major curriculum changes and professional readjustment but that is part of everyone's life in a free-market economy. The reality is that everyone specializes anyway after they graduate and then tries to learn the in depth knowledge to make them productive in their field while casting off the facts memorized just for the tests.
After hearing some of the AAVMC honchos speak at the AVMA convention speak in Seattle this summer, they are not really on the ball. The biggest idea they had was to launch another study to consider the issue next year.
Joseph Knecht
josephknechtdvm November 21st, 2009 01:32:18 PM
PJB, Didn't fair too well at Walmart.. Took Socks, and lasted 1/2 hour before an employee came up to us.. Think it shocked a bunch of employees, and they turned their backs.. I could've said that he was a service dog.. but I wouldn't .. Went to Lowes, and they all welcomed him, even though there is a sign.. In both stores he was put in a shopping cart..
barri November 21st, 2009 03:55:57 PM
"There is actually an excess of veterinarians; academia is incapable of allocating the human capital and training in any efficient way. There is an excess of small animal practitioners because of admission policies and the curriculum that has now been dominated by companion animal medicine. Limiting admission to particular tracks like food animal, companion animal and a research track including lab animal and pathology among others is the answer of Eyre and a few other retired deans. Of course it means major curriculum changes and professional readjustment but that is part of everyone's life in a free-market economy. The reality is that everyone specializes anyway after they graduate and then tries to learn the in depth knowledge to make them productive in their field" Wow, you could be speaking of just about any professional education program; glut of the generalists, seriously lacking in the needed specialists. Why doesn't academia get that? (Andy may the gods of academia save us from the obvious being studied ad infinitum!)
Barri, call the WalMart and talk to the manager. You might get them to set a nicer policy :) My favorite WallyMart is a couple of blocks from the Farm & Home/feed store and has to compete with them and they still have a hitching post. Not many of us cart our dogs with us but they don't dare say anything for fear of losing more business to the Farm and Home which also has dog kennels set up for display and will let customers "try them out" while going in to shop if the customer prefers "doggie day care" instead of being accompanied.
PJB November 21st, 2009 04:56:45 PM
Thing is, you can teach paraprofessionals to do the various repetitive food animal health and management tasks like pregnancy checks, foot trimming, CIDR insertion, first-line milk fever treatment. AI is already the domain of technicians where I am. Similarly, a lot of time, producers wait to call vets until it is far too late for vets to do anything. I guess I think that if large animal vets were really needed as much as everyone says they are, the economics would support it, and we wouldn't need government subsidies (such as tuition reimbursement) to provide adequate incentives for vets to serve rural food producers.
Grace November 21st, 2009 07:19:01 PM
Sadly, we're not willing to pay more for food but will pay exorbitant amounts for pet health care. That's the economics driving the lack of money in livestock vet care/services.
PJB November 21st, 2009 10:17:44 PM
Corporate Ag + Ag Policy --> Artificially Low Meat/Egg/Dairy prices --> Low Value Livestock --> Producer Unwillingness/Inabilty to Pay for a Vet Visit --> Loss of Ag Vets --> Food Safety and Security Compromises, Zoonoses, Epizootic Outbreaks, Loss of Small Producers (AKA Family Farms)
Seriously. If you are a small producer of poultry it can be cheaper to cull a whole flock than to pay for a single vet visit, especially when the vet's solution is going to be to cull the flock. Or just shoot a sick ewe or even cow.
Which all leads to the common situation of NO vet services available for livestock, and small farmers/homesteaders buying a copy of Where There Is No Vet -- written to be used in Third World villages -- and going it alone. This is pretty much true in our overwhelmingly rural county where there are many small dairies, hobby farms, small poultry and beef producers. Plenty of equine vets. Just try to get 'em to look at a goat -- and then discover that you know more from reading the Merck manual and toodling around the web than the vet does, anyway.
Constricted Supply of Vets + High Educational Debt + Consumer Willingness to Pay High Fees for "Pet" medical services --> strong incentive to go into small animal practice
The government can address this problem with debt relief, as has been proposed. It can also encourage vet schools to admit ag-oriented students with grants and other incentives. The ultimate solution probably depends on agricultural policy ceasing to promote artificially low food prices, so that farmers can afford the vet visit, and the flock, herd, or individual is actually worth the fee.
H. Houlahan November 21st, 2009 11:54:02 PM
Grace really hit it on the head that most of what is done on farms does not need 8 yrs of college. Paraprofessionals in human medicine like nurse practiitoners, physician assistants can deliver the same quality basic care that family docs used to deliver at lower costs and sometimes greater client satisfaction. Create a food animal paraprofessional in the schools of animal science where agriculture is taught and you have the synergy of all the agriculture faculty in other fields like food sciences.
Joseph Knecht
josephknechtdvm November 22nd, 2009 12:00:56 PM
Well I just found this web site looking up stuff on vets and just started reading the blog and I'm curious because my husband is going to go to vet school here in alittle bit and he wants to go into large animals and work on the ranches he grew up on ranches and has ranched a big part of his life but anyway i was confused a little with what everyone was saying is it a good thing and can they support a family or would he be better off going into another type of vet med
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