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.