Skip to main content
President's Message: Around the world in 80 days — Part 3
January 16, 2025
Boozhoo, aanii, kwey anidush, greeting and hello. Let’s continue our trip and explore what CVMA has learned from our contacts with organized veterinary medicine in other parts of the world.
NEW ZEALAND
We left off in Australia so let’s pay a visit to their Commonwealth neighbor, New Zealand. I have been fortunate to meet with the President of the New Zealand Veterinary Association (NZVA) on a couple of occasions. What is immediately apparent is the associations’ recognition and relationship with their Indigenous peoples and how genuine and moving it is. We saw a similar relationship in Australia.
As a smaller market economy, NZVA has developed close ties with its Australian counterparts and regulators to work on licensing veterinary drugs in their countries. Both associations have small ruminant segments that are much larger than Canada’s, which gives them leverage in the market and makes them more attractive to multinational pharmaceutical companies. Canada has joined with these 2 countries to become a part of a trilateral pharmaceutical application process, which should help us access a wider range of veterinary pharmaceuticals.
There is a bit of a puzzle in New Zealand, but it may help us as we try to understand our own workforce shortage. The population of New Zealand is just under 6 million people whereas Canada’s population is closer to 39 million. We have 5 veterinary schools that graduate approximately 400 students per year, New Zealand has 1 veterinary school that graduates approximately 150 veterinarians a year.
The number of graduates in relation to population, even if we exclude the international students in New Zealand, is much higher than Canada’s. What do they do with all those veterinarians? The answer is that they do not appear to have difficulties in finding jobs for these veterinary professionals, and more surprisingly, New Zealand also faces a workforce shortage. Like Canada they are understaffed in the rural areas and in production animal medicine. Similar to the Canadian landscape, New Zealand’s Massey University, has to walk the economic tight rope of increasing local enrollment versus maintaining international enrollment and the increased tuition potential international students can bring.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?
Worries about graduating too many veterinarians doesn’t appear to be a reality. Even in a relatively small country like New Zealand the rural versus urban lifestyle choice poses problems for our industry and being a good global citizen and educating international students in the face of a local workforce shortage is not just a Canadian university dilemma. The one thing that really stands out is that we need to become much more comfortable recognizing our Indigenous peoples.
EUROPE
The CVMA has strong ties with the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE), the European representative body for the veterinary profession in Europe. The relationship is important enough and the organization complex enough that CVMA has decided that our representative should hold the position for a 2-year term, and unfortunately, I am not that person. Dr. Tracy Fisher from Regina, Saskatchewan, is our current liaison and represents Canada’s viewpoint on a wide variety of issues common to both jurisdictions such as antimicrobial resistance and usage, animal welfare issues, and One Health. The CVMA, FVE, and the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) regularly collaborate and publish joint position statements. Being an association of countries, the FVE deals with great variation in the approach to issues and in the degree of government interest in veterinary medicine. In general, they are more advanced when it comes to Animal Welfare legislation but seem to have just as many problems with workforce shortages, mental health issues, and response to climate change as we do.
CHINA
China is more complicated. They have chosen to reach out to our American neighbors for assistance in training their next generation of veterinary leaders. For years they have been sending students to veterinary colleges in the United States and then using the knowledge they have obtained to advance veterinary medicine in China. Like Mexico, they have slowly shifted from an emphasis strictly on agriculture to a growing companion animal industry. A few months ago, they hosted a delegation from AVMA, but currently have no relationship with CVMA or FVE. EAST ASIA The CVMA has recently begun a pilot project to improve our knowledge of veterinary medicine in East Asia. Dr. Chris Bell, a CVMA past president, volunteered to spearhead this project. He recently attended the 23rd Federation of Asian Veterinary Associations Congress. The Federation of Asian Veterinary Associations (FAVA) is made up of multiple veterinary medical associations from the Asia-Pacific region, including Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Burma, India, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Philippines, as well as the Australian Veterinary Association (AVA), AVMA, and NZVA.
Dr. Bell’s report to CVMA Council highlighted several interests that they have in common with CVMA, 2 of which I would like to share.
The congress started with an antimicrobial resistance [AMR] individual country review, as AMR is a key focus for FAVA. They highlighted their AMR document for member nations titled “Empowering veterinarians in Asia towards fulfilling their roles on the Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance” and presented their work with the United Nations.
In 2022, FAVA opened a physical office for One Health in Fukuoka, Japan. There has been some significant outreach into the Asian nations for collaboration between human health and veterinary health and there was a signing of a MOU [memorandum of understanding] between the Japanese human and veterinary medical associations.
It looks like there are lots of opportunities for CVMA to share information and experiences with our East Asian colleagues as the number of similarities is astonishing. The 3 key pillars that the Korean Veterinary Medical Association works toward are identical to CVMA’s 5 strategic priorities.
I hope you have enjoyed these informational messages from around the world and have a better understanding of why the CVMA invests in our relationships with other countries. It has been an honor to represent CVMA and the Canadian veterinary profession and to have the opportunity to meet with numerous global leaders in the profession, to learn from them and to share these experiences with my colleagues and CVMA members.
Tim Arthur
