It's time for another Chew on This podcast on protecting our food supply and keeping our food safe.

One thing that you definitely should know by now is that veterinarians are crucial to food safety. Our last podcast detailed some of the ways that vets do this.

In this week's Chew on This podcast, we dig a little deeper into the specific jobs that veterinarians hold in public and private service. Our guest is Dr. Ted Mashima, Associate Executive Director for Academic & Research Affairs at the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges. Dr. Mashima tells us about interesting and important jobs that veterinarians hold.

Listen to the new podcast now.

We've told you before that veterinarians play a crucial role in keeping our food safe. Veterinarians don’t just take care of pets; they also help ensure a safe and healthy food supply.

In our latest Chew on This podcast, Dr. Mark Lutschaunig, director of the AVMA’s Governmental Relations Division, explains the indispensible role veterinarians play in food safety and how a shortage of food animal veterinarians could spell trouble. Listen to the new podcast now.

Dear President-Elect Obama,

We’ve been saving this letter until we got closer to the inauguration because, with the selection of cabinet members and press conferences, we know you’ve been very busy lately and we didn’t want this note to get lost in the shuffle. Now that we’re less than a month from your first, history-making day as president, let’s get started. First off, we’d like to again say congratulations—the nation really believes in you. Good luck on your first hundred days in the White House.

Now let’s get to the meat of the matter, because, as you already seem to know, you’ve got a lot of work to do. We at KeepOurFoodSafe.org and our readers would like to let you know that you’ve got a big problem you have to solve, and in a word, it’s food.

Over the past several years, we’ve seen a growing number of farm animal welfare challenges and food safety crises. Within the past year alone, we experienced the largest U.S. recall of beef products in American history. Not since the 1960s have Americans been as concerned about their food as they are today. After two Chinese melamine crises in the past two years—first in pet food and then in milk powder and eggs—consumers are deeply worried about imported food stuffs and how they are inspected. While many organizations have been calling for years for a reorganization of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies to create a single, centralized food inspection authority, it now falls on your shoulders to make that happen. And it must happen if you’re to be successful in keeping our nation’s food supply safe.

We’d also ask you to take actions to solve the growing shortage of food supply and public health veterinarians. No other profession plays a more crucial role in food safety than veterinarians, and we seem to be running out of them. Currently, dozens of rural, agricultural counties are without a single large-animal veterinarian to treat their livestock and chickens. A recent study forecasts that this shortage will only get worse; the demand for farm veterinarians is projected to increase by 12 to 13 percent annually while the availability of those veterinarians will likely decrease by 4 to 5 percent every year.

There are several proposed federal programs that would address this growing shortage of veterinarians, including two competitive grant programs—the School of Veterinary Medicine Grant Program and the Agricultural Biosecurity Grant Program—that would fund expansions at veterinary colleges to increase their output of public health veterinarians and another—the National Veterinary Medical Service Act(NVMSA)—that would repay the college loans of young veterinarians who choose to work in underserved geographic and professional areas of veterinary medicine. These programs have been authorized by Congress, but need to be funded adequately VPHWEA still awaits the approval of Congress. These programs need to become a reality if we stand a chance of turning the tide.

To make the situation even worse, veterinarians will soon have fewer tools to keep our food supply safe unless you take action. The Food Animal Residue Avoidance Databank (FARAD) is expected to close this year due to lack of funding. FARAD offers veterinarians information about the amount of time that drugs, toxins and other contaminants require to be metabolized by farm animals before the animal or animal product like milk is safe for Americans to consume. Obviously, if FARAD closes down, veterinarians will lose a resource that helps them keep Americans safe from contaminated meats. It’s not an expensive program ($2.5 million a year); funding must be found to save FARAD.

There is, of course, more that needs to be done to bolster America’s food safety systems and ensure the quality and safety of our food supplies going forward. We’ll keep you posted on those challenges as they arise. But we are confident that, with your help and support, the solutions we’ve listed in this letter will help us begin to address this critical issue. We at KeepYourFoodSafe.org wish you well. The country needs your leadership.

Sincerely,

KeepOurFoodSafe.org

We have more good news to report from the front lines of food safety. More than five years in the making, the National Veterinary Medical Service Act (NVMSA) is about to become a reality. Soon, the legislation to provide loan repayment for veterinarians who work in underserved areas -- like with the food supply -- will become a living, breathing program.

And for those of you reading this at home who have no idea what NVSMA is, let me give you the back story. There is a shortage of veterinarians who care for, treat and inspect the animals that become our meat and dairy products. Anyway you slice it, that can’t be seen as good news. So, to encourage more vets to work with food supply animals and in rural areas (where the cows, pigs, etc., usually are, obviously), Congress passed NVMSA in 2003. NVMSA will help the vets who volunteer to work in these positions or neglected areas by helping them repay some of their student loans.

Even though the program was approved in 2003 and funded by Congress in 2006, 2007 and 2008, the program never got started. Well, now it’s about to finally happen.

How did we do it? Ultimately, the feat of bringing NVMSA to reality was accomplished by a Congressional mandate – inserted in the Farm Bill approved this spring – that motivated the USDA to move forward. The folks at USDA will be the ones administering NVMSA, and now they have about nine months to work out all the particulars of who is eligible, how they will apply, etc.

Hopefully, by next fall, veterinarians can start applying. And it looks like, soon after that, more vets will be working on the food supply in rural areas.

We had the chance to talk to Dr. Gregory S. Hammer, AVMA’s President, about the success of NVMSA. For Dr. Hammer, the victory is the culmination of a long and arduous pursuit. “ Make no mistake about it – it has taken us five years of reaching out, reaching in, wrangling, rebuking, begging, banging, teaching and testifying on Capitol Hill and to the Executive Branch for NVMSA to become a reality,” Dr. Hammer said.

Dr. Hammer testified in support of NVMSA before a US House of Representatives subcommittee earlier this year, urging implementation of NVSMA. Hats off to him and all the many others who worked so hard for this food safety victory!

If you want to learn more about NVMSA, go here and scroll down. There are a lot of great links at the bottom of the page.

As Americans get ready for their summer vacations and Independence Day BBQs, we thought we’d take a minute to point out a great resource for learning about the folks who keep those burgers and hot dogs safe for us to eat. The resource is the AVMA’s Food Supply Veterinary Medicine site, and it’s a must-visit for anyone interested in food safety.

The AVMA’s Food Supply Veterinary Medicine site provides colleges of veterinary medicine, states, industry, other veterinary organizations, media and veterinary medical students with the recruitment tools they need to bring veterinarians into various food-supply veterinarian careers.

Why is it important to get people in those jobs? Well, as the world’s population rises, the wo rldwide demand for food from animals is also expected to increase by 50% by the year 2020. This, coupled with agroterrorism threats, emerging diseases and the increased globalization of the food chain, are all increasing the demand for food supply veterinarians.

Here’s something to chew on: our nation has a critical shortage of the veterinarians who work to protect us from food-borne diseases. We need more veterinarians, including new graduates, to enter and stay in food-supply careers. We need more veterinary medical students to consider the careers in food supply veterinary medicine and more pre-veterinary students with plans to go into this critical discipline of veterinary medicine.

Check out the site. There’s lots of great info there, like food supply veterinarian data maps and clarification of some of those food safety terms that are so confusing. And remember to thank the food safety vets while you’re enjoying your 4th of July BBQ.