The elective tour takes 10–11 students with two faculty members to the Texas Panhandle and into Oklahoma. Over the course of the week-long trip, the group visits veterinary practices in the region that service the production industry. These veterinarians also host the students at their clients’ enterprises, demonstrating to the students the relationship between the producer and the producer’s veterinarian. “We have worked every year with practices focused on food animal,” said Fajt. “These are production-oriented practices. We have, in the past, showered into a swine facility and learned about biosecurity from their perspective. We try to visit a harvest facility of some kind. We have also had the opportunity to visit with the Texas Cattle Feeders Association in Amarillo, so the students get to see the organized industry side of things in addition to just the production side of things. Students get the full breadth of where veterinarians get involved and what food animal production looks like from the beginning to the end.” Recent data have shown that while there may not a shortage of food animal veterinarians, there will always be a need to develop the next generation of veterinarians who have the passion and skills for working in the production industry. Posey noted that the average age of veterinarians working in production medicine is between the mid-50s to early 60s, indicating a need for a whole new group of veterinarians to serve the food animal industry. However, one of the most interesting opportunities, from Posey’s perspective, is watching the progression of students from the classroom to the feedlot consultation. “It’s really interesting,” said Posey, “when you start looking at most of the veterinarians who are in the feedlot industry. They actually start out as mixed animal practitioners, and some of them still have those practices in addition to serving the large producers in their area. Their careers actually started here in the college and they end up in industry because of what they have learned in rural practice, and then they go on. So it often has to be a progression from practice “As a student interested in strictly food animal medicine, this tour gave me great insight into the vast array of opportunities I have as a clinician,” said Lauren Thompson, a veterinary student in the class of 2018. “I now have a more in-depth viewpoint on the many aspects of production agriculture that rely on a veterinarian. I think it is becoming more and more evident that producers want to hear from veterinarians, but we, as food animal practitioners, must keep in mind the management and economic restraints put on operations. There are a multitude of factors that play a role in allowing us to produce safe, wholesome, and affordable products for consumers, and each of these require managers, workers, and veterinarians to collaborate to achieve the overall goals for the entire production process.”
Texas is the nation’s leading producer of beef.
to production, because it takes a really deep skill set to be a feedlot veterinarian.” The Food Animal Production Tour elective is able to accommodate only 10–11 students due to cost and to avoid disrupting the operations and practices they visit. At the end of the elective, the students have to do a project that enables them to extend what they learned on the tour and to share it with the rest of their class of veterinary students. Posey and Fajt said these projects have taken the form of posters, presentations, and even workshops with guest speakers. The projects are not necessarily large, but they emphasize to the students on the tour the importance of sharing knowledge and providing insight into the production industry that others may not have. “We had one group of students who attended a presentation at a feedlot on low-stress handling of cattle,” said Posey. “Tom Noffsinger, a veterinarian in Nebraska, was presenting a seminar to feedlot employees. Our students turned around and had him come to Texas A&M to expose all the other students to his message, about how we need to handle cattle differently than the way most of us were trained.” Close to 132 students attended that seminar to watch him talk about how cattle think when moving in a structure, how to keep them in a chute, and how to handle them in a safe and stress-free way. In conjunction with this presentation, the students organized a beef quality assurance workshop for those that attended. Over the years, the number of students who have expressed interest in food animal medicine has been relatively low. Posey stated that out of a class of veterinary students at Texas A&M, only about 35–40 students will choose to go into mixed animal practice, with the majority of those being companion animal oriented practices versus food animal practices. The Food Animal Production Tour helps to show Summer 2015 •
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