Purdue weighs need for more veterinary grads-WEB ONLY

Purdue University officials are weighing the idea of boosting enrollment in the school’s veterinary programs to help meet the nation’s growing need for more veterinarians in key public health jobs.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a report last month that there is a lack of government-employed veterinarians in food inspection, pathology and other specialties – a situation that could put the public at risk.

Willie Reed, dean of Purdue’s School of Veterinary Medicine, said a shortage of veterinarians working in large animal medicine increases the chances that diseases could spread from animal to animal and farm to farm.

“They may go undetected for days, and by then it may have caused havoc with the livestock population,” he told the Journal & Courier of Lafayette.

The GAO report said the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service has not been fully staffed in the past decade. And by 2011, it found, 30 percent of USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service veterinarians will be eligible to retire.

Officials with Purdue’s veterinary school are investigating a proposal to increase enrollment by 20 percent, said Kathy Salisbury, the school’s assistant dean.
She said the Purdue vet school’s class size of about 70 is one of the smallest in the country. The school graduates about 65 veterinary doctors a year, a figure that’s less than average for universities that offer the degree.

Salisbury said that about three-fourth of vets nationally wind up in private practice.

Although 30 percent to 50 percent of Purdue veterinary graduates focus on small animals – mostly pets – over the past five years there have been increases in students focusing on other options, such as public health and livestock production, she said.

“It is slow growth,” Salisbury said. “One of the things that we have tried is to educate students on their career options – opportunities that they may have not thought about.”

Filling the jobs won’t be an easy task. The 28 veterinary schools in North America produce about 2,700 new animal doctors each year, an average of 96.4 a school.
Reed said Purdue, like most universities with veterinary schools, would like to expand, but adding new facilities, equipment and faculty members is expensive.

“The opportunities are just bountiful for veterinarians right now,” he said. “But we expect that if we maintain current levels – that is, 2,700 graduates a year – and don’t expand by 2020, there will be a shortage of 15,000 veterinarians.”

Purdue is working to educate students about public health and governmental jobs.

In 2006, the school began offering a Veterinary Homeland Security Certificate Program – a long-distance graduate-level program based at Purdue to educate veterinarians, police and other public health professions on animal emergency response.

That program has the ability to seed communities with people trained to assist police or government agencies in case of a major health disaster, such as an outbreak of avian flu or pandemic flu, said Sandra Amass, the program’s head.

“The more people that we have trained, the faster we can respond,” said Amass, a Purdue professor of veterinary clinical sciences.