Animal doctors vital to homeland security, GAO says

Thursday, 19 February 2009
by Mickey McCarter

A growing shortage of veterinarians worldwide have led to current or potential veterinarian workforce shortages in the federal government, which may find itself lacking necessary expertise in the event of a catastrophe such as an outbreak of avian influenza, according to a report from congressional investigators released Thursday.

The American Veterinary Medical Association told the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that the veterinarian shortage places the nation's food supply at risk and could impede a response to a pandemic originating from animals, said the GAO report, titled "Veterinarian Workforce: Actions Are Needed to Ensure Sufficient Capacity for Protecting Public and Animal Health."

The veterinarian shortage is expected to worsen, as the 28 US veterinary colleges can graduate only 2,500 students annually, according to the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects an increase in demand for veterinarians of 35 percent from 2006-2016. As such, the demand for 62,000 full-time veterinarians in 2006 will rise to 84,000 in 2016. In response, Congress has passed legislation recently to encourage increased opportunities and enrollment at veterinary colleges.

More than 3,000 veterinarians work for the federal government in agencies at the Departments of Agriculture, Defense, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Homeland Security (DHS), contributing to plans to keep American agriculture secure.

For example, the veterinarians at DHS, which employs a small number of them overall, work to develop policies for defending the national food supply against natural or man-made emergencies. Veterinarians at the Animal Research Service at the Department of Agriculture have been vital to the agency's research on the detection of avian influenza and the development of vaccines for the bird flu.

But the US federal government has not conducted any broad, comprehensive assessment of its veterinarian workforce needs, despite the important contributions of veterinarians to homeland security, the GAO report noted, although some individual agencies have made smaller assessments.

HHS is one department that has not assessed its veterinarian workforce needs departmentwide, with HHS officials reporting to GAO that they did not feel veterinarians were mission critical.

Federal agencies reviewed by the GAO generally agreed with its recommendations on their veterinarian workforce. DHS objected to a GAO conclusion that one of its veterinarian workforce estimates is impractical and thus irrelevant.
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