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Veterinarians Behind the Scenes: Government, Industry, and Zoo Medicine

Government Veterinarians

Who do you think will discover a biological, epidemic, or food supply contamination threat first?

Veterinarians are uniquely qualified to recognize health and disease across any species, even undiscovered ones! We are uniquely trained in meat and food production systems and analysis. A veterinarian makes a terrific public health consultant.

A veterinarian was nominated as Surgeon General to the United States (he stepped down quickly for personal reasons.) Government veterinarians research terrible diseases, train and deploy service animals for the military, and maintain and protect the integrity of the food supply.

A United States military veterinarian discovered why thousands of people were dying after eating the meat in Bangladesh: the meat was preserved with poisonous formaldehyde!

Any Specialists might be employed by the government of their nation. If your country does not do so, convince them they need you, because they do!

What kinds of work does a government veterinarian do?

Entry level US government veterinarians start as GS-11

Regulatory

Public Health

Military Service

Veterinarians in Industry

Veterinary Specialists in the Food Animal Production Industries

Food Animal Production veterinarians juggle the responsibility for animal health and quality of life with the industry’s demands for production, sometimes confinement, and sometimes at the expense of an individual animal’s life. It is challenging and interesting work, especially for someone with an “outsider’s” perspective, who did not grow up on a farm.

Many new insights are changing entrenched factory farming systems.  Large housing stalls with a friend for veal calves, and cooperative piglet raising on grassy hillsides for production swine are just two fairly new practices changing the industry.

Happy animals are health animals. Healthy animals are more profitable. It seems simple, but it’s been decades in the making.

Production medicine offers a unique extreme career of rural, outdoor site visits and work, combined with air-conditioned, civilized, theoretical computer modeling and systems design to increase production through health measures and production system measures implemented through management schemes. Few careers offer the diversity of work and settings of production medicine.

Dairy, Beef, Chicken, Swine, Ducks, Rabbits, Ostrich, Fish (Aquaculture), Elk, Deer, Bison

Veterinarians in the Equine (Horse) Industry

Horses no longer take everyone to work and the grocery market, but they are still companions for pleasure and sport, professional racers, and trusted farm workers. Equine practice is anything from backyard trail horse hoof care to competitive, cutting edge and highly technical sports medicine.

American Association of Equine Practitioners.

And the One Specialist Every Kid Would Love to Be…Zoo Vet!

American College of Zoological Medicine
American Association of Zoo Veterinarians