Food Supply Veterinary Medicine

By: Allyse S.

What is Food Supply Veterinary Medicine?

From farm to table, Food Supply Veterinarians protect world wide food supply. Any animal that produces for people is considered a production animal. Meat, eggs, milk, wool, and other products are all covered under this topic. When you think about it in a broad perspective, this is the most important branch of veterinary medicine, because without production animals we would not have an adequate food supply as a population.

On The Farm:

If the production animal is sick or contaminated, your food or product from this animal will be as well. Food Supply Veterinarians are crucial to keeping both animal and product safe and healthy. Not only does this branch of veterinarians provide the care for the animals, they advise and provide client education. Some diseases like Foot and Mouth disease are very common and highly communicable and affect the food supply animal population very heavily, thus the importance of the Food Supply Veterinarian. Food Supply Veterinary Medicine not only effects the food on our plate, but business and the economy.

Currently, the worry is that there are not enough Food Supply Veterinarians and too many animals. More than 67% of the veterinarians in practice focus on small animals like dogs and cats. This ratio raises another red flag because a large majority of the practicing  large animal veterinarians are reaching the age of retirement. As the number of veterinarians decreases, the number of cattle and production animals continue to grow. The numbers just aren't adding up. While the number of male and female vets are approximately equal, there are only approximately 90,000 veterinarians in practice in the US today.

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