AVA president attends Animal Welfare Roundtable

On Thursday 2 February 2023, AVA president Dr Bronwyn Orr met with Senator the Hon Minister Watt, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, as part of an Animal Welfare Roundtable. The AVA is considered a key stakeholder when it comes to animal welfare issues in Australia, and was one of only six groups invited to this meeting by the Minister.

Dr Orr discussed the AVA’s top welfare objective: that any animal under human care in Australia should have access to veterinary care. This includes livestock and companion animals, as well as animals in research and entertainment, injured wildlife and animals in emergencies. “Health is one of the core domains under the internationally recognised Five Domains model of animal welfare,” said Dr Orr. “Good health is essential to good animal welfare, and no one understands animal health better than the veterinary profession.” 

One major barrier to this objective is the veterinary workforce shortage. Ensuring accessibility to veterinary care requires a healthy and sustainable veterinary workforce. “The current model of privately funded veterinary care cannot sustainably meet the needs of Australia’s animals,” said Dr Orr. To remain viable in times of extreme staff shortages, veterinary businesses have had to deprioritise work that serves the public good such as some aspects of production animal work. Some rural areas have lost access to veterinary services altogether. This results in negative effects on the agriculture sector, which in turns impacts safe food production, future funding and Emergency Animal Disease (EAD) detection. In order to implement good EAD surveillance systems, veterinarians are needed on the ground, embedded in rural communities, acting as the eyes and ears of Australia’s biosecurity system.  

On behalf of the AVA, Dr Orr called for increased public investment to bolster the rural veterinary workforce and promote regional accessibility to veterinary services. Some recommendations the AVA is campaigning for include: 

• a scheme similar to the Animal Health and Welfare Pathway, which is currently in the process of being rolled out in the UK. This program sees a veterinarian visit every commercial farm in the UK once a year for three years to provide advice, providing a much-needed lifeline for rural veterinary practices and ensuring every farmer has access to up-to-date information and the tools required for farming in the modern era.   
• robust, independent standards setting process with adequate scientific input and effective monitoring, that provides consistency across Australian states and territories. This may include a revitalisation of the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy 
• HECs debt fee forgiveness for new graduates that choose to work in rural areas 
• increased engagement with First Nations people in animal welfare, via: 
  • collaborative relationships with organisations such as AMRICC, who collaborate with First Nations people to improve the health and wellbeing of companion animals in remote communities 
  • provision of grants for projects involving First Nations people similar to the recent grant provided for the Saltwater Country Project
  • federal support for veterinary student scholarships to improve participation of Indigenous Australians in veterinary science. Currently only 0.6% of veterinarians identify as Indigenous, compared to 3% of the wider population 

Dr Orr said, “Currently, livestock production in Australia has the general support of the Australia public and a positive social licence to operate. This social licence is built on trust and the expectation that animal welfare checks and balances are in place… Which is why engaging with [veterinarians] can help ensure our agricultural industry’s social licence to operate continues into the future.”