Open Blog Post

For my open blog post this week, I'd like to talk about veterinary medicine in public practice. Public practice vets are generally employed by the government and what do they do you ask? They can do disease surveillance. There are 1700+ infectious diseases in humans with 50% being zoonotic (a disease or infection that is naturally transmitted between humans and animals, ex- rabies). They can make sure these stay under control and don't cause an epidemic. Another job they can do is Disaster Prepardness against terrorists trying to poison our food or water systems. They keep "Foot and Mouth" disease out of the United States. If that were to get over here, over half our population of cattle and sheep would be gone within a year or two. That would cause meat prices to skyrocket and you don't want me to go on. They work closely with the FSIS (Food Safety Inspection Service) to inspect our meat and make sure we're not injesting BES (Mad Cow Disease) or Bovine Tuberculosis.
APHIDS (Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service) to make sure we don't get anything foreign diseases coming through customs or through trade services. I could go on and on about what veterinarians in the public practice could do but I think this is enough to suffice.

Observing Community

I guess the CVM here doesn't do a whole lot of community events, I had to look in the upcoming events and I will talk about it. The 3rd annunal IRONDOG 5K run is coming up in about 2 weeks to raise money for owners who are finacially unable to provide medical care for their companions. It's like any other 5K trying to raise money, the members raises pledges for completion of the run and the funds will be used to support the medical and surgical management of cats and dogs at the Michigan State Veterinary Teaching hospital. As I looked back on the past runs, I see that anywhere from 500 to 600 people have participated in it and they raised $10,000. It shows that people care about others and animals and like to help, or maybe they just like to run. Ha, but anyway, there really isn't that much to say other than I can assume that by taking a day out of their own schedule to help raise money for people that wouldn't be able to provide otherwise means that there are some caring people in the world.

Open Blog Post

So I'm a little behind but my open blog post topic this week is on Food Animal veterinary medicine. Food animal is a common name for well, the animals we eat, such as dairy, swine, poultry and much more. Yesterday's food animal vets worked on an individual basis, treating animals that were sick. Today's vets work more on a herd basic, trying to prevent sickness in the first place. They also play a huge role in the disease eradication and prevention in the animal populations. One of their main concerns is food safety and public health. They are the ones who make sure our burgers from Five Guys isn't contaminated with Mad Cow or the milk we drink doesn't have TB.