[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 106 (Friday, July 29, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9439-S9440]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                AMERICAN VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION

  Mr. President, I rise today to praise the American Veterinary Medical 
Association for their efforts in ensuring the highest standards for 
animal and public health in this country. Before coming to Congress, I 
practiced veterinary medicine, and I appreciate the AVMA's role in 
helping veterinarians excel and grow in their professions.
  At this time, I would like to read for the record remarks recently 
given by the president-elect of the AVMA, Dr. Henry E. Childers, at 
their 142nd Annual Convention in Minneapolis:

       Members of the House of Delegates, the World Veterinary 
     Association, other international guests, friends and 
     colleagues . . . I am honored to be a part of this historic 
     gathering. I am especially pleased to welcome my fellow 
     veterinarians from around the world and to be addressing 
     those participating in the first gathering of the World 
     Veterinary Association in the United States since 1934.
       Seventy-one years ago, the AVMA and the World Veterinary 
     Association met to discuss the hot issues of the day: poultry 
     diseases, advances in food animal medicine, food safety and 
     global disease surveillance. Today we are meeting once again 
     and discussing the issues of our day: poultry diseases, 
     advances in food animal medicine, food safety and global 
     disease surveillance.
       3,917 veterinarians attended that 1934 meeting in New York 
     City at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, many from the same 
     countries that are joining us today. To each I extend our 
     most sincere welcome, especially to our colleagues from 
     Afghanistan and Iraq. I hope you find this experience to be 
     one of the most memorable of your career.
       Well, here we are, 71 years later. And while we may have 
     different languages and customs, different ways of 
     communicating with our clients and treating our patients, we 
     have come together once again precisely because we have more 
     in common than ever before. We are united in our quest for a 
     better world and better medicine for both animals and humans. 
     We are united in our concerns, we are unified in our 
     challenges, and we are unified in the celebration of our 
     achievements. We are what veterinary medicine is all about.
       When I told my wife Pat that I was giving this speech, she 
     reminded me of something Muriel Humphrey once told her 
     husband, Hubert, this country's vice president and a favorite 
     son from this great State. She said, ``Hubert, a speech does 
     not have to be eternal to be immortal.'' I will try to 
     remember that.
       I come before you today slightly imperfect. As many of you 
     know, I just had a knee replacement.
       My recent surgery got me thinking, do any of us truly 
     appreciate our knees? Really appreciate the foundation they 
     provide? I know I did not, not until they both gave out on 
     me. I quickly came to realize, however, that my knees must 
     work together in unity in order for me to complete the tasks 
     I take for granted. I just assumed they would provide a solid 
     foundation without much attention from me. I was sadly 
     mistaken.
       Paying attention to our profession's basic principles is 
     what I would like to talk to you about today. We all assume 
     that our professional unity and our rock solid foundation are 
     perpetual. They are not. Without attention and care, our 
     foundation can slowly begin to erode. That is why I am 
     dedicating my presidency to the care and nurturing of our 
     professional unity--the essential cornerstone of our great 
     profession.
       Traditionally, past AVMA presidents have used this time to 
     present you with a roster of very specific recommendations 
     for new programs and initiatives. Many of those 
     recommendations have resulted in impressive and important 
     changes within the AVMA.
       But different times call for different approaches. I come 
     before you today with a total commitment to spending my year 
     at the helm of this great organization working to reaffirm 
     our unity.
       As president-elect, I have spent much of the past year 
     speaking to a wide variety of veterinary associations and 
     student organizations. In May, when I gave the commencement 
     address at Auburn, I was reminded of my own graduation. I was 
     reminded of my classmates and my professors. Of the long 
     hours and challenges that we faced and survived. I think back 
     to the unity we felt as a class and our coordinated effort to 
     help each other. Doing whatever it took to ensure that each 
     individual met the challenges of the curriculum and 
     graduated.
       Unity got us through school and a C+ mean average did not 
     hurt.
       And on our graduation day, we became veterinarians. Not 
     equine veterinarians. Not bovine veterinarians. Not small-
     animal veterinarians. We became veterinarians--members of a 
     select group of professionals that dedicate their lives to 
     ensuring the highest standards in animal and public health.
       Why is unity more important today than ever before? Aesop 
     said it better than I ever could: ``We often give our enemies 
     the means for our own destruction.''
       Today our profession is facing challenges, the likes of 
     which we have never seen before. From town hall to Capitol 
     Hill, from the classroom to the laboratory, from the farm to 
     the dinner table, our attention is being pulled in a myriad 
     of directions. In light of those challenges, we must remain 
     focused, we must stay united. While we may practice in 
     different disciplines involving different species of animals, 
     we must be of one vision, one voice. We must maintain the 
     highest standards in medicine and public health, encouraging 
     and assisting others in accomplishing the same. While we may 
     practice in different parts of the world, we must foster 
     unity with our fellow veterinarians from around the globe. 
     Good medicine knows no boundaries, knows no borders. We must 
     cooperate and collaborate with our fellow veterinarians 
     worldwide to make this world a better place for animals and 
     humans alike.
       Has there always been perfect unity within the profession? 
     If you look back in the annals of our convention or in the 
     Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, you 
     will see many instances where we did not all agree. We are a 
     diverse profession, and there are bound to be differences in 
     opinion. But I would argue that the French essayist, Joubert, 
     was right when he said, ``the aim of argument, or of 
     discussion, should not be victory, but progress.''
       Some of the differences our profession is experiencing 
     today may just be a reflection of what is happening to 
     society as a whole.
       For example, we have moved away from an agricultural 
     society. In the past 20 years,

[[Page S9440]]

     many of our colleagues have chosen a metropolitan setting, 
     where they concentrate on companion animals. As a result, the 
     number of food animal graduates has slowed to a trickle. The 
     reality, however, is that food animal practitioners are more 
     important to society than ever before. There is an acute 
     shortage of food animal veterinarians during a time when the 
     world is threatened by zoonotic and foreign animal diseases. 
     At the same time, we are experiencing the same crisis level 
     shortages of public health veterinarians. Most new graduates 
     are not choosing a career in this essential segment of 
     veterinary medicine. The profession must find ways to 
     encourage undergraduates to enter food animal and public 
     health practice.
       In an attempt to resolve the critical food animal 
     veterinary shortage, AVMA has been working on a number of 
     strategies and initiatives.
       For example, as many of you know, the AVMA helped fund a 
     study to estimate the future demand and availability of food 
     supply veterinarians and to investigate the means for 
     maintaining the required numbers.
       AVMA also approved and financially supported the 
     development of benchmarking tools for production animal 
     practitioners by the National Commission on Veterinary 
     Economic Issues. These benchmarking tools are designed to 
     provide our current practitioners with help in ensuring that 
     their practices are financially successful. That, in turn, 
     will assist in attracting future veterinarians to food animal 
     practice.
       The government relations division of the AVMA is diligently 
     working to convince Congress to provide Federal funding for 
     the National Veterinary Medical Service Act. If fully funded, 
     that act could go a long way toward encouraging recent 
     graduates to practice food animal medicine in underserved 
     areas and provide veterinary services to the Federal 
     Government in emergency situations. Just last month, the 
     Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee approved 
     $750,000 for a pilot program. We applaud the efforts of 
     Representatives Pickering and Turner and Senators Cochran and 
     Harkin, all of whom sponsored the original bill, and want to 
     thank the Appropriations Subcommittee, especially Senator 
     Brownback for his kind words and commitment to veterinary 
     medicine.
       AVMA is also lobbying our Federal legislators to pass the 
     Veterinary Workforce Expansion Act--an important piece of 
     legislation that will provide us with sorely needed public 
     health and public practice veterinarians. Today's public 
     health practitioners play an invaluable role in U.S. 
     agriculture, food safety, zoonotic disease control, animal 
     welfare, homeland security, and international standards and 
     trade. Without an adequate number of public health 
     veterinarians, the wellbeing of our Nation--yes, even the 
     world--is at risk. Senator Allard has been invaluable and 
     unwavering in his dedication to moving this act forward 
     through the complicated legislative process. I intend to do 
     everything I can as president to provide support to Senator 
     Allard's effort to pass the Veterinary Workforce Expansion 
     Act.
       On the international education level, AVMA has been 
     committed to the global unity of the profession for decades. 
     The AVMA Council on Education has partnered with Canada since 
     the accreditation system was developed and has accredited six 
     foreign veterinary colleges. We are working with six 
     additional schools. We are extremely proud of those colleges. 
     As more inquiries come forward, it is self-evident that the 
     world looks to us as the gold standard in educational goals 
     and expectations.
       At the same time, I will be supporting the efforts of our 
     specialty organizations to attract and train the new 
     practitioners they need. Currently, there are 20 veterinary 
     specialty organizations comprising 37 distinct areas of 
     expertise under the AVMA umbrella.
       The AVMA economic report on veterinarians and veterinary 
     practices has revealed a substantial difference between the 
     incomes of specialists and nonspecialists practicing in 
     similar disciplines. I will, as president, encourage the 
     development of additional in-depth financial surveys that, 
     hopefully, will motivate our undergraduates to further their 
     education and achieve specialty status, thus helping ensure 
     that public demands for advanced veterinary medical services 
     are being met while, at the same time, increasing our 
     economic base.
       Hopefully, these additional specialists will serve as a 
     resource for our veterinary colleges who are becoming 
     increasingly understaffed.
       In the past 15 years, we have seen a shift in the 
     demographics of our profession. I will bet there were plenty 
     of raised eyebrows when McKillips College, in 1903, and the 
     Chicago Veterinary College, in 1910, graduated our country's 
     first female veterinarians. It is hard to believe that as 
     recently as 1963, the profession included only 277 female 
     veterinarians.
       We are proud of the fact that an increasing number of our 
     graduates are women. Their contributions and leadership have 
     strengthened our profession. However, the recent AVMA-Pfizer 
     study confirmed lower mean female incomes within the 
     profession. Now is the time to explore solutions to that 
     problem, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that 
     this issue is thoroughly investigated and addressed.
       To achieve unity, I firmly believe that we must be 
     inclusive, not exclusive. The public has always been well 
     served by the diversity in our practice areas. Now, we must 
     diversify our membership. The AVMA--with more than 72,000 
     members representing 68 constituent organizations in the 
     House of Delegates--must now seek to represent every race, 
     creed, and color. As a profession, we must mirror the public, 
     and they us. We must become a profession more reflective of 
     the population we serve.
       Over 30 years ago, Dr. H.J. Magrane, then president of the 
     AVMA, spoke often and passionately about the need for 
     inclusion and equality in our profession. As a profession, we 
     have still not made the advances in diversity that are 
     necessary.
       As the great social scientist, Margaret Mead said: ``In 
     diversity . . . we will add to our strength.''
       In order to achieve our diversity goals, we must initiate 
     both practical and creative ideas to arrive at an enriched 
     membership. It is up to us, all of us, to reach out to young 
     people and to nurture their interests and talents so that we 
     become the shining example of professional diversity. We need 
     to be involved in youth groups, in churches and in our public 
     schools, and united in our quest, so that others say: We must 
     emulate the AVMA.
       Once in veterinary school, our students, all our students, 
     need to know that we, as a profession, are there to mentor 
     and to help them through the special challenges they face. 
     None of us got to where we are today without at least one 
     special person--one special veterinarian--who took us under 
     his or her wing and proved to be our own personal 
     cornerstone. We can do no less for those who are striving 
     today to become members of our profession.
       In what programs is the AVMA currently involved concerning 
     diversity? First, at its April 2005 meeting, the board 
     approved the establishment of a task force on diversity. That 
     task force will recommend steps that we must take to meet our 
     goals in diversity.
       But here is something you can do in the immediate future. 
     Tomorrow, our convention will offer a full day diversity 
     symposium, including an appearance by Dr. Debbye Turner, 
     veterinarian, former Miss America, and contributor to the CBS 
     Early Show. I hope many of you will plan on spending part of 
     your day attending these important meetings, if time permits.
       Diversity will also be an integral part of the 2006 
     Veterinary Leadership Conference. Each of these opportunities 
     is designed to help us achieve the diversity we have talked 
     about for so long.
       So what is on our want list for 2005? As I have mentioned, 
     critical shortages exist in food animal and public health 
     veterinarians. But we also are desperately in need of 
     teachers and researchers. We need policy experts and homeland 
     security professionals. We need legislative leaders, and we 
     need veterinarians who are visionaries and who can lead us in 
     this era of globalization. There exists such critical 
     shortages in so many areas that some days I wonder if our 
     small numbers can, in fact, make a difference.
       But then I am asked to speak somewhere. And I look at the 
     enthusiastic faces in my audience--established veterinarians 
     who are deeply involved in their State and local 
     associations, students who live and breathe only to count off 
     the days until they can touch their dream, high school 
     students with straight A's who are anxious to know what else 
     they have to do to make it into veterinary school, third 
     graders with a commitment to animals that rivals the grit and 
     determination of a Jack Russell terrier--and I know that we 
     will not only survive but thrive.
       As I have said, my presidency will be dedicated to re-
     energizing the unity that has always been our strength and 
     foundation. As another President from the Northeast, John F. 
     Kennedy, once said, ``Let us not be blind to our 
     differences--but let us also direct attention to our common 
     interests.''
       Ladies and gentlemen, our common interests are so much 
     greater than our differences. Like the society and world 
     around us, we are changing. And change is never easy. But 
     with your help, and our combined dedication and attention to 
     preserving and protecting our unity of purpose, we will 
     thrive and remain one of the most admired and respected 
     professions in the world.
       During the coming year, I will be looking to you for help. 
     I will listen and I will participate. I will follow your lead 
     and I will lead to enlighten. I implore each of you to 
     participate in this great organization and make it your own. 
     For you are the teachers, you are the visionaries, you are 
     veterinary medicine.

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