The role of a vet in society
- an economics perspective
Jonathan Rushton
Henk Hogeveen
Keith Howe
This presentation was developed within the frame of the NEAT project, funded with support from the
European Commission under the Lifelong Learning Programme (Grant no. 527 855). Please attribute the
NEAT network with a link to www.neat-network.eu. Except where otherwise noted, this presentation is
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Learning objectives
 In the next 45 minutes we will examine:
 The roles of the veterinarian
 The nature of the different clients that the veterinarian has to serve
 Positive and negative aspects of the animals in society
 How to interpret the above from an economics perspective
2
Learning material
 You will be given information to help understand these
different issues and an exercise to reinforce your
understanding of the information.
 You will also be provided with key references
3
Introduction
 Veterinarians help to ensure that the animals we keep
and manage have levels of health and welfare that
society demands
 They achieve this through serving different groups and
performing different roles
 Yet how many veterinarians are there?
4
Albania
Austria
Belgium
Bosnia/Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
Montenegro
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Serbia
Slovak Republic
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Macedonia
Turkey
Ukraine
UK
Chapter 4
Number of veterinarians in Europe (EU, 2007)
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
-
5
Albania
Austria
Belgium
Bosnia/Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
Montenegro
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Serbia
Slovak Republic
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Macedonia
Turkey
Ukraine
UK
Total
Chapter 4
Number of vets per 1000 livestock units
3.00
2.50
2.00
1.50
1.00
0.50
0.00
6
Albania
Austria
Belgium
Bosnia/Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Greece
Hungary
Iceland
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malta
Montenegro
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Serbia
Slovak Republic
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Macedonia
Turkey
Ukraine
UK
Total
Chapter 4
Veterinarians as a percentage of the human population
0.08%
0.07%
0.06%
0.05%
0.04%
0.03%
0.02%
0.01%
0.00%
7
Introduction – key facts
 Veterinarians as a group represent a small part of
society who need to work with:
 animal owners to achieve animal health and welfare
outcomes
 representatives of society such as government
officials and members of non-governmental
organisations to achieve wider goals on animal health
and welfare
8
Introduction – key facts
 Therefore vets need to collaborate and motivate others
to improve their practices of animal management and
care
 Economics can add value in this relationship by
providing concepts and methods to place a value on
animals and in assessing the value of changes in
practice
9
Introduction – key facts
Economics - the study of making
rational choices/decisions in the
allocation of scarce resources to
achieve different goals
10
Roles of Vets
11
Roles of Vets
 Veterinarians are a resource used to benefit society
by making animals healthier and more content, which
people value
 They enable farmers to get more output from the feed,
labour, and other resources they use in farm animal
production
 They help pet owners keep their companion animals
healthy and contented
12
Roles of vets
 Veterinarians also help sport and recreational animal
owners maintain the health and fitness of their charges
 And they can be involved in sustaining populations of
rare wild animals
In economic terms animals that are more productive,
healthy and contented provide people with more food,
happier pets, more raw materials, improved
conservation etc. from given resources
13
Exploring veterinary roles
 In order to explore the role of the veterinarian within
society we need to:
 Examine what roles animals have in society and whether these
roles are static
 Identify and describe the clients of veterinary services
 Understand how veterinarians adapt to changing needs
 The steps we will look at are the beginning of using
economic concepts when performing the complex
activities that give the veterinarian their role in society
14
Roles of animals
15
The role of animals in society
 How many of you have eaten meat, eggs, milk in the last
24 hours?
 Who is wearing leather shoes and belts?
 Who is wearing a jumper or jacket made from wool?
 Who has a pet?
 Who has a horse?
 And who is a vegan?
Even vegans are affected by animals as they compete
for resources in the production of food
16
Animals are a fundamental aspect of societies
All the roles of animals
are sources of benefit
(value) to people
Feed and clothe
people
Provide transport
Give pleasure
and company
Act as an investment
and store of wealth
The role of animals
 The role of animals in society is NOT static
 For example just over a 100 years ago animals were
largely kept for transport and draught power
 Through the use of fossil fuels and combustion engines
this has freed both animals and land to for other activities
18
For example
Cerca 1910
Cerca 2010
19
And more seriously:
20
The role of animals
 Changes in the way we cultivate land has allowed an
increase in grain production, which in turn has supported
intensive livestock production methods
 Meat and livestock products have become relatively
cheap and consumption has increased - overall people
are wealthy and have more time
 People can now spend more time with their pets and the
value of these animals has risen
21
Intensification and specialisation of livestock systems
Managed forage and
conservation systems
New forage species
and concentrates
Housing and
handling systems
Sophisticated
handling systems
Predominantly grazing
and foraging systems
22
Role of animals – key facts
 Animals in societies are fundamental
 They serve a variety of functions which can be
understand through the social and economic forces of
each society
 These forces are not static and the role of animals is
also not static
 In response the veterinary profession has modified
how it helps people with the management of animal
health and welfare issues at individual and national levels
23
Role of the Vet in Society
24
The roles of the vet in society
 The vet serves people through advising them how to
manage and improve animal health and welfare
 Their interaction with the animal – the patient – is both
 direct - if individual treatment is demanded
 Indirect - if the owner – the client – is being instructed to change a
practice or to implement an animal health intervention
25
The roles of the vet in society
 In order to understand the role of the vet in society it is
important to think of the relationship between
 the client
 the patient
 the vet
26
The animal health and welfare triangle
Veterinarian
Treatment
Intervention
Patient
Money
Instruction
Healthy
Animal
Advice
Prescription
Food
Care
Attention
Housing
Client
27
Who are the clients? – the private sector
 The vet has a number of different clients who are private
animal owners of:
 Pets
 Sport animals
 Food animals
 They can also serve the needs of larger businesses such
as:
 Insurance companies
 A corporate business that runs food animal businesses
28
Who are the clients?
 There are other clients who represent society in different
ways
 Some these organisations will be private and represent:
 animal owners
 people interested in animal welfare, wildlife
 Other organisations will be funded through taxation and
have jurisdiction at a local, national or international level
29
Important issues with clients
 Clients will demand different types of advice and services
 They will see the vet services and products as
resources in maintaining health and welfare of their
animals – adding value
 Therefore, they will value these veterinary resources in
different ways and will be willing to pay for this resource
at different rates
 Some of this valuation will be influenced by government
policy and business strategy
30
Animal health and welfare triangle: - economic interpretation
Veterinarian
Resource
Treatment
Intervention
Healthy
Animal
Advice
Prescription
When things
go wrong!
Patient
Resource
Food
Care
Attention
Housing
Money
Instruction
Expresses the
value of vet skills
to the client
Client
Beneficiary
Resources
31
Roles of the Veterinarian – some examples
32
Role of the Veterinarian – small animals
 A dog is brought in a referral clinic with a suspected heart
problem
 It receives a series of diagnostic tests and it is
recommended that is has open heart surgery to extend
its life
 In this example:
•
•
•
Who are likely to be the clients?
How will this arrangement affect the type of advice and
services provided?
Who will capture the benefits from this procedure?
33
Role of the veterinarian – contagious disease management
 An exotic contagious disease has entered into the cattle
of a country.
 The disease causes production losses and also has an
impact on international trade
 Veterinarians are asked to respond to the problem and
find ways to eliminate the causative agent
 In this example:
•
•
•
Who are likely to the clients?
How will decisions be made on the interventions?
Who will be the beneficiaries from the animal health
interventions?
34
Role of the Vet in Society – prescriber of medicines
 A poultry system that raised broilers for meat has just
received a batch of day old chicks that do not perform
well in the first ten days
 The owner would like to treat the flock with an off limit
antibiotic
 The veterinarian refused to prescribe the requested
antibiotic
 In this example
Who is the client?
What are the costs?
What the benefits?
35
Role of the Vet in Society – police person
 A dog breeding farm calls a vet in to treat a breeding
bitch
 During the visit the vet notices that the breeding bitches
are thin and some look very badly treated
 The vet treats the bitch they were called out to deal with
 She also talks to the owner about the general state of the
other dogs
 In this example
Who is the client?
Who would be the beneficiaries?
Who would pay the costs of any actions?
36
Role of the veterinarian
 The veterinarian serves the needs and demand of
different clients:
 Private individuals
 Private organisations
 Public organisations
37
The goals of the clients
 Overall the goals of clients are not simple to describe
 The goals can be driven by monetary rewards
 They may be influenced by a sense of stewardship for
a type of animal or breed
 There may be an emotional link with the animals which
in the case of pets and sport animals will be individual
 These emotional links can be strong enough for people
to believe the animal to be part of the family
 Animal owners may have feelings of status from their
animals – biggest herd, largest animal, fastest horse
38
The goals of the clients
 In addition the clients will have other goals in their lives –
competing goals for the resources they could use for
animal health and welfare of their animals.
 The goals clients have for an animal and also the
competing goals in their lives will influence how they
regard a vet and value the veterinary services and
products a vet provides.
The goals will influence the role of the vet
39
Summary
40
Summary - Role of the vet
 The role of the vet is diverse from:
 Private service and product sales – business activity
 Managing contagious disease in society – public role
 Managing pharmaceuticals in society – public role
 Policing welfare issues in society – public role
41
Summary - Role of the vet
 These veterinary roles are complex and evolve with
changes in how society values:
 Animals and the resources and services they produce
 Animal health and welfare
 Vet services
 Important to place animal disease and health issues into a
context of animals roles in society
 Understanding this social and economic context allows
a deeper appreciation of the role of the vet
42
Summary – Role of the Vet and Economics
 Economics can add value in the understanding of the
roles of the vet by:
 Defining which resources are being used in animal
health and welfare interventions
 Identifying the goals of the clients of the veterinary
service and products
 Valuing the resources used and the outcomes from
the veterinary interventions
43
Key References
 Jones, S.D. (2003) Valuing Animals. Veterinarians and Their Patients
in Modern America. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore &
London.
 Introduction – pages 1 to 9
 Norwood, F.B. & Lusk, J.L. (2011) Compassion by the pound. The
Economics of Farm Animal Welfare. Oxford University Press, UK.
 Chapter 2 pages 7 to 33
 Rushton, J. (2009) The economics of animal health and production.
CABI, Wallingford, UK
 Preface pages xi to xv
44
Contact
Jonathan Rushton
Royal Veterinary College
jrushton@rvc.ac.uk
http://www.neat-network.eu
45
Additional slides
46
47
48
Client – the farmer
 There are different types of farmers
 Species they keep – cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry capture the main
species
 Type of owner
Family farm
Corporate farm
 Focus of the farm – for cattle either milk or beef, but in other parts of
the world cattle can also be focused on a dual purpose system
 The way decisions are made
 Different people in the household will be involved in resource
allocation and the application of resources
 Having an awareness of the farm business
 Any decision in the farm context need to have strong economic
motivations
49
Client – the pet owner
 The majority of pet owners will have species such as dogs and cats
 There will be other types of pets from such as rabbits, guinea pigs,
hamsters through to exotic and relatively rare reptiles
 These pet owners have in common the desire to keep a one or a
small group of animals to a high standard
 Often these animals become part of the family and their health and
possibly their welfare is as important as the people in the house
 Often this leads to people expecting treatments similar to those
received by humans
 To manage this process a veterinary insurance market has
developed
50
Client – sport animal
 In the United Kingdom the largest animal sector in the rural areas is
the equine
 This sector employs more people and generates more revenue than
the other farm animal species
 The income from this sector is largely around racing horses, but also
showjumping and eventing horses
 This income comes from people attending events, betting and
advertising
 The animal health specialist plays a significant role not just in the
health and welfare of the animal but also investigating performance
 The role is therefore quite diverse
51
Introduction
 Veterinarians serve an important role in society in
terms of ensuring that the animals we keep have levels
of health and welfare that society demands
 This raises a question of what are the roles of animals in society
and is this role static
 If this role is not static how does the veterinary profession react to
these changes
 And how can this reaction be guided to achieve an efficient and
sustainable outcome for the profession and the role society demand
from the profession
 Despite this critical role the actual number of
veterinarians is relatively small
52
Role of the vet – an example
 A horse owner has a valuable stallion that has a bacterial
infection
 They demand that the veterinarian use the most up to
date antibiotics to treat the infection
 The veterinarian adopts the standard cascade
procedures to treat the animals
 In this example
•
•
•
Who is the client?
How has the veterinarian decided on the procedure for
treatment?
Who are the beneficiaries?
53