THE PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

In late May, the Board of Directors voted overwhelmingly to change the name of our organization to the American Association of Bovine Veterinarians. The idea of including the word “veterinarian” in our name is not new and the process began to gain momentum last September in Omaha during a meeting of the Forward Planning Committee (the Committee made up of former AABP Presidents that is tasked with devising and developing measures for the Association's growth and development). The Forward Planning Committee recommended to the Board of Directors that our name be changed to include the word “veterinarian”. The goal was to be more descriptive and inclusive and to more effectively communicate (without the need for additional explanation) who our organization represented and what we were focused upon. Additionally, although not nearly as important, a new name might give more credibility and relevance to the official positions and statements that we are increasingly called upon to issue regarding societal topics such as cattle welfare and food safety.

The Board of Directors discussed the proposal in depth at the Omaha meeting and asked Dr. Gatz Riddell, our Executive Vice President, to determine how difficult it would be to change our name and to estimate any potential associated costs. Dr. Riddell spoke to our Association Attorney and it was determined that a name change would be very easy from a legal perspective. As well, the costs would be minimal with most of these costs involving changes to letterhead, signage, etc., less than $1,000 in total. We spoke with representatives of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians (who had changed their organization’s name in 2002) about issues that they may have gone through and that might otherwise be overlooked. Their response was that the name change had been straightforward and the results had been positive. Yet one more opinion was sought, that of Dr. Mac Cropsey who had been one of the “founding fathers” of our organization and AABP President in 1974. He explained that the reason the organization had been originally named “Bovine Practitioners” was to be consistent with the two other AVMA “allied associations” of the time, Equine Practitioners and Swine Practitioners. Most importantly, there was no deliberate decision by those early organizers to bypass the use of the word “veterinarian” in our name. I shared some of this perspective in my November 2009 President’s Perspective column and a number of you contacted me or your District Director … with almost all of the responses being positive.

The Board took up the matter again at its Spring Meeting and almost all the Directors voted to change the name to include “Veterinarians”. Since the Board was nearly evenly divided between “Cattle Veterinarians” and “Bovine Veterinarians”, it was decided to do a straw poll of the membership on that question. 65% of the respondents indicated that they preferred “American Association of Bovine Veterinarians” … some of the feedback was that this name was preferred in order to provide a clear connection to the history of the organization and to honor the earlier members and leaders who were so instrumental in creating and nurturing AABP. Additionally, “bovine” is more easily translatable in the languages used by our Canadian and international members (as compared to “cattle”).

As is true of any changes in our Bylaws, these changes will need to be ratified during the Annual Business Meeting at our upcoming Annual Conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. You can review the proposed changes by going to our aabp.org website and click on “Proposed AABP Bylaws” located on the right side of the opening page under “AABP Quick Links”. In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me or your District Director.