THE PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

“The AABP Mission Statement:
Increase Awareness and Promote Leadership”

        First, I want to thank Dr. Walt Guterbock for taking the time to tell us about the AABP Foundation in last month’s President’s Perspective column. The Foundation is only 2 years old, but it has already made some significant grants to help insure the future of bovine practice and the AABP.
        When I last wrote this column in December, I told you that I was preparing to represent AABP at the British Cattle Veterinary Association’s Annual Congress in Southport, England. Besides delivering a scientific paper, my goal was to enhance communication and collegiality between cattle veterinarians in the United Kingdom and the AABP. I landed in England within 2 days of the worst flooding that had been seen there in a 1,000 years … and, every day I was there, it continued to rain! But while the weather was soggy, the greetings that I received from our British colleagues were very warm indeed. They invited me to their President’s Dinner (a black tie affair accompanied by people of Scottish heritage wearing their appropriate kilts) and asked me to share with them who AABP represents and a bit about our goals. I shared our mission statement and let them know that we are a group of nearly 6,000 veterinarians, mostly from North America, but with members in every continent in the world. I also invited them to join us next August in Albuquerque at our combined AABP Annual Conference – Academy of Veterinary Consultants Summer Meeting. There was a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for my message (or at least I chose to see it as such because I didn’t have to buy myself a drink for the rest of my stay!). My hope is that at least 25 BCVA members come to Albuquerque to get a feel for the American West and to experience our cutting-edge continuing education. If you happen to run across any of them, please introduce yourself and share what you do … you will find the British to be wonderfully friendly!
        At that dinner, I had the pleasure of sitting next to a fellow who is the Chief Regulatory Veterinarian for the United Kingdom. He shared with me that one of their big issues was how to deal with the badger population … a reservoir of rabies in the UK. Cattlemen and cattle vets are calling for the government to significantly reduce the badger populations due to its being a rabies menace to cattle. The way he explained it, the right course seemed pretty straightforward from a public health perspective. But, then he explained to me how untenable this would be to the urban-suburban British population who are even more “pet-crazy” than their North American brethren. It all sounded too familiar … How do we do the right things from a scientific perspective without significant public relations fallout? This leads me to talk a bit about the second of the three major purposes in our AABP Mission Statement: “The American Association of Bovine Practitioners is an international association of veterinarians organized to … increase awareness and promote leadership for issues critical to cattle industries …”
        As some of you may know, AABP is incorporated as a 501 (c) 3 not-for-profit corporation with the major mission of membership education. However, we are legally entitled to represent our membership (and the cattle industries we serve) on political issues of relevance as long as AABP utilizes less than 10% of the budget doing so. Particularly over the last 2 or 3 years, AABP has increasingly taken stands in support of issues of importance. The summer meeting of our Executive Committee occurs at the AVMA office in Washington, D.C. and we meet with industry representatives and lobbyists whose activities are impacting our membership. We spend time meeting with political representatives and staffers to help educate them on the realities of modern animal agriculture, and the appropriate place for the veterinarian in ensuring a wholesome, safe, and abundant food supply. We meet with FDA to take the pulse of their leadership on issues like Extralabel Drug Use and OTC pharmaceuticals. We share some of our position statements with interested parties and try to gain insight into “how the political winds are blowing” … all of our efforts are focused on how to best represent our members’ interests in the increasingly complex socio-political milieu that modern animal agriculture finds itself.
(more to follow next month …)

Roger Saltman