Veterinary information: the current situation and future trends.

Veterinary science is well supplied with abstracting and indexing hournals. Both experience and an investigation undertaken for the Food and Agriculture Organisation indicate that they are comprehensive in scope and subject coverage. Computer operation of information services is now routine, and mechanised alerting and retrospective services are available. A veterinary round table was set up in 1973 by the Commission of the European Communities to attempt to improve veterinary information. The round table is conducting a detailed study of the value of the available machine information systems to veterinarians and is compiling a multi-lingual thesaurus. In addition, it is investigating the need for a new review journal, methods of recording animal disease incidence and variations in the needs of the different types of veterinarians for information. The use of machine information systems is expected to become more widespread in the near future. Many will be available on-line, a method of working which offers great advantages in speed and flexibility of operation.     

Veterinary education,present and future needs

Extract

It is a very great pleasure to be here today to deliver the Jubilee Veterinary Oration at this veterinary school, for whose staff and graduates I have a very great affection. I feel some empathy with Marc Antony whose words so well reflect my own feeling about my capacity for the task.     

Peptide absorption: a review of current concepts and future perspectives.

Absorption of di- and tripeptides from the gastrointestinal tract is accepted as being an important biological phenomenon. The extent to which peptides are absorbed and the nutritional and metabolic significance of peptide absorption remain unclear. Evidence is strong for the existence of multiple peptide transport systems, including one type that is electrogenic in nature and that requires a protonmotive force and cotransports two H+ for every peptide transported. The rate of absorption of peptides can be responsive to level of dietary intake and level of dietary protein. Peptide absorption seems to be an important physiological process in ruminants, and this process may account for a large portion of absorbed amino acids. An important new observation is that the nonmesenteric portion of the portal-drained viscera of the ruminant is a major site of peptide absorption. These new observations may result in a reshaping of the currently accepted theory concerning protein utilization by ruminants.     

Veterinary dairy herd health management in Europe: constraints and perspectives

The nature of veterinary work in dairy health management in Europe has changed over the past years and will change even more dramatically in the near future. The consumers and the media show increasing concern about animal welfare, safety of products of animal origin and traceability of animal products. Farmers in Europe have to produce under strict, often expensive and laborious regulations, while still commercially competing with farmers outside the EU and not subject to the same rules. Veterinarians should adapt their knowledge and skills to the new challenges and developments of the dairy sector. Dairy farmers nowadays ask for support in areas that go beyond clinical activities: environmental protection, welfare, nutrition, grassland management, economics and business management. Bovine practitioners should be able to advise in many different areas and subjects--that is the challenge to our profession. Veterinary education with regards to cattle health management should start with individual animal clinical work, which constitutes the basis of herd health advisory programmes. The bovine practitioner should then look beyond that and regard the herd as the unit. Each diseased cow or group of cows should be detected early enough to avoid financial losses or such losses should be prevented altogether by detecting and managing risk factors contributing to disease occurrence. Herd health and production management programmes represent the first level to optimise dairy farm performance. Expansions to that should further be considered, comprising both animal health and welfare issues, as well as food safety and public health issues. The latter could be addressed by quality risk management programmes following the HACCP-principles. Cattle veterinarians should follow recent developments and invest in new skills and knowledge in order to maintain their usefulness to the modern dairy farmer. Finally we are convinced that the cattle practitioner should evolve into this direction, otherwise the veterinarian as we know him will miss the train in the next years.