Kaitlyn Lutz grew up within 20 minutes of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine’s New Bolton Center campus. She grew up riding horses and working on horse farms, but as an undergraduate animal science major her junior year at the University of Delaware, she worked with anatomy professor Dr. Robert Dyer, a dairy veterinarian. They used BouMatic’s StepMatrix to proactively measure dairy lameness in hopes that early detection could help address declining milk production in dairy cowherds.
After each milking, cows crossed a ground force plate connected to a computer, which evaluated each hind limb’s pressure. Each cow’s identification number was decoded. “There was a cutoff point when the pressure decreased enough that she was flagged in the system as needing to be put into a certain chute and checked,” says Lutz, who was intrigued.
Dyer wasn’t necessarily recruiting a future food animal vet, but he was enticing and educating one, and in a nation where the number of food animal and food safety veterinarians has been dwindling to crisis levels, every large animal veterinarian interested in work on food production farms is welcomed.
Still, in Lutz’s just-graduated class of 116, only nine others were food animal majors, which mirrors the 10 percent figure (or about 200 a year from all schools) the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) always reports. A few made the change from food animal science “to small animal or whatever,” she says, because there are more jobs for a better salary and lifestyle. However, Lutz has also heard that despite word of shortages, food animal vet jobs aren’t so readily available. In fact, at the American Association of Bovine Practitioners conference last August, she learned that the issue is more of a financial shortage than a manpower one – that in the downward spiraling economy, farms can’t afford food animal vets.
Still, it’s her career choice and she says she would enjoy going to an underserved rural area. “Everyone laughs at me [because of her size, at 5 foot 5 inches tall] and can’t understand why I want to do this, but I do,” Lutz says. “Farm animals have been in the public spotlight. There’s an outcry for better care and nutrition, and vets are key players. Farmers want to do what’s best for themselves and their animals, and working with farmers is incredibly rewarding. They’re the hardest working people on earth.”
Threats and solutions
Those already entrenched food animal vets work longer and harder and travel further afield. Distance affects response time and is often the difference between life and death.
As Maine’s state vet, Dr. Don Hoenig works with livestock and poultry, since Maine is a big egg-laying state. He’s responsible for import regulations, animal welfare and public health, even emergency management for farm animals in disasters. Four years ago, after a needs-assessment study, the entire state was designated as a shortage area. In Maine, there are 35 to 40 large animals vets (including equine) and just a dozen or so full-time food animal practices, he says.
In the five counties of southeastern Pennsylvania, there are 30 food animal veterinarians to care for 70,000 animals, and 51 in Lancaster County where the food animal population is almost 10 times greater. Ten other Pennsylvania counties have no food animal vets.
Little can account for, or justify, a farm vet’s longer hours, or near-constant on-call status. “It’s a lifestyle choice,” Hoenig says, “but the pendulum is starting to swing the other way with greater understanding of the value in local agriculture. That message is getting out to young people.”
Combined with the recent food safety scares, there’s a realization that all of agriculture needs to solve the shortage. Baby boomer retirements, especially among farm vets, hasten the shortage. “If there’s no one in the field who can readily detect a foreign disease and there’s an outbreak, it makes food security a homeland security issue,” Hoenig says. “Our food animal vets are truly our first responders. That’s the critical need I see, and when I talk with the public, that’s the angle I play.”
The North American Veterinary Medical Education Consortium (NAVMEC) was launched in 2009 to ensure that veterinary medical education meets the needs of our changing society. Spearheaded by the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC), NAVMEC in Washington, D.C., has brought together some 200 vested stakeholders, beneficiaries and experts.
A comprehensive veterinary workforce study from The National Academies of the Sciences examined the current and future capacity of universities and colleges to provide sufficient numbers of adequately trained veterinarians and identify training needs relative to the demand. “That’s the data we need,” says Dr. Mike Chaddock, the deputy director of AAVMC, one of five sponsors. “Everything else is anecdotal.”
Opportunities
If the number of vets needed will grow by 22,000 by 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it makes it one of the fastest-growing professions. If, as predicted by 2016, four of every 100 food animal veterinary jobs will go unfilled, there must be opportunity in the void.
If experienced large-animal vets are willing to relocate and set up a new practice, they could make a decent living. That’s happening. One midcoast Maine vet, Paula Benner, moved up from Maryland, where she was an equine vet. She intended to follow suit in Maine, but then decided her skills were better applied to other farm animals.
“It’s happening out of necessity,” Hoenig says. “Vets are branching out, even if they didn’t intend to.”
He’s also a proponent of selling the profession by getting students the farm exposure that more and more lack. “Ride with us,” Hoenig says. “Volunteer on a farm, and if it appeals, then figure out how to do it.”
It’s what Lutz did while still an undergraduate at Delaware. In her first internship, she assisted a Delaware farmer who taught her about management, biology, economy, animal handling and more. “The most convincing part is the people you work with,” she says. “You get to know their culture.”
For each interested newcomer, it takes eight years of schooling to get them out of the pipeline. They emerge in a trickle – about 2,500 veterinarians a year from the nation’s 28 vet schools. When they graduate, they can be nearly a quarter million dollars in debt, only to make an average of $64,000 a year, including small animal practitioners for which there isn’t a need. Still, Hoenig says there’s light at the end of the tunnel, or more light than a decade ago.
Chaddock sees golden opportunities in shortage areas for those who are willing to forego specialization in favor of vet work as a generalist (as he once did). He also believes medical physicians should consider partnering with veterinary doctors in joint clinics that serve man and his best friends. “If it’s ‘one health, one medicine,’ then let’s live it,” he says.
He fully understands that vet schools are training students with an exceedingly high-tech approach – and as specialists. Not enough of that training translates into a rural position where boots, rubber gloves and a pail might be as high-tech as it gets.
What’s helping?
The Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program, established through the National Veterinary Medical Services Act of 2003, finally received adequate funding last year after the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), which administers the program, finalized its rule-writing process. This is the program’s second year.
Each year, state veterinarians can nominate shortage areas, then put out the call for graduating vets to apply for reimbursements of up to $25,000 a year for up to three or four years that they remain working in the crisis area. Last year, the nearly $5 million federal funding still couldn’t satisfy all 280 requests. About 60 were approved, including two in Maine and two in Pennsylvania. Some state associations also offer reimbursement initiatives.
“The question is where will those 50 or 60 be in 10 years,” says Chaddock, who was the director of governmental affairs for the AVMA when the federal legislation passed. “They might stay four or five years, then go back to suburbia, and then the program isn’t successful.”
The industry has to find a way to do more than repay a rural vet’s education, he says, like providing lifestyle support services or job support for spouses. “There needs to be more support than, ‘Here’s the money,'” says Chaddock, who points to the military service model as more ideal.
He says 40 percent of last year’s graduates spent the first year out of vet school in an internship because they couldn’t land their dream job. They’re doing rotations halfway across the world, but not in Kansas. “The USDA is crying for vets, believe me, but those are not jobs today’s students want,” Chaddock says.
Lutz plows forward
In addition to her clinical rotations at the George D. Widener Hospital for Large Animals on the New Bolton campus, Lutz embarked on two externships her final semester. In mid-February, she spent a week in Nebraska with beef cowherds on feedlots. In April, she shadowed New Jersey’s state veterinarian to learn more about regulatory medicine. She also earned a yearlong livestock medicine internship upon graduation at Colorado State University.
Thus far, she’s had one $2,500 scholarship junior year at Penn through Pfizer Animal Health and the American Veterinary Medicine Foundation, but she’s applied for the federal loan forgiveness incentive, too.
At Penn, Lutz says there’s a food animal science club. Majors try to interest others through basic forums on topics like animal welfare or the use of antibiotics on farms. But, the jury’s still out, even for her own long-term future. “I’ll know better when I see what job offers we all get,” she says.
The author has been published in national and regional magazines as well as daily and weekly alternative city newspapers. A gentleman farmer in Quakertown, Pa., he writes about people, social trends, historic preservation and 18th century America, agrarian culture, land use and sports and recreation topics.