COCHISE โ Traditional veterinary medicine for large food animals in rural Arizona has all but vanished, leaving the stateโs livestock increasingly vulnerable to disease and death.
More than 1 million food animals are raised within the stateโs borders, according to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture Census. But there are only 30 USDA-accredited predominantly food animal veterinary practitioners to care for them, 21 of whom reside in a single county. Another nine work across six different counties, leaving eight counties with none.
โIt means we are much, much more exposed to a number of exotic pathogens, foot-and-mouth disease for one, which wouldnโt just shut down our animal economy, it would shut down all of our (agricultural) production, but it would also shut down all of our tourism,โ said Dr. Shane Burgess, dean of the College of Agriculture at the University of Arizona.
โI know this because I worked in the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Great Britain in 2001, and thatโs exactly what it did,โ he said.
For the last 45 years, Arizona veterinarian Gary Thrasher has practiced veterinary medicine on large food animals in rural Arizona, with an office located in Cochise.
โItโs quite a bit different from when I went to school, which seems like the Dark Ages to a lot of people. When I was in school the majority of veterinarians were what they called mixed rural practices, where they did small animals as well as livestock, cattle and horses,โ said Thrasher.
Today, this shift away from rural veterinary practice could have severe consequences on the stateโs $17 billion agriculture industry and its overall economic health.
More than 66 percent of the American Veterinary Medical Associationโs membership comes from companion animal practitioners, with only 6 percent registered as food animal practitioners.
Arizona is no exception.
According to Thrasher, a large number of food animal veterinarians in the state work for dairies, mostly in urban areas.
โAs far as beef cattle (practitioners) that actually operate in the rural areas where the ranches are โฆ you can count them on one hand, that are left,โ he said. โAnd most of them are creeping up in age pretty quickly.โ
The Arizona Veterinary Medical Associationโs president and a practicing veterinarian, Jim Maciulla, said those few vets will soon retire with no others to fill their place.
โThe James Herriot days are probably behind us where a guy or a girl gets in a truck and does a little bit of everything,โ Maciulla said.
The Office of the State Veterinarian also works to protect the animals, as well as the public, within the state by detecting, containing and eradicating livestock diseases. But due to a lack of funding in the stateโs Department of Agriculture, staff levels have fallen.
โThe Office of the State Veterinarian, and really the entire Department of Agriculture, is very lean in terms of staff levels. Thereโs not enough people to do the work,โ said Susan Gale, the acting state veterinarian.
Gale said the department relies heavily on practicing veterinarians out in the field. Half of Arizonaโs cattle are on range, or freely roaming around thousands of acres of ranchlands, the very places with the fewest vets, she said.
And while the Arizona Livestock Incident Response Team, or ALIRT, was designed to minimize the impact of livestock disease by responding to unexplained livestock deaths, field veterinarians are still critical to detecting problems.
โWe, as a society, have come to expect and assume a wholesome, affordable, safe food chain, and veterinary medicine is a real tantamount part to that. And we may not be able to continue at that moving forward if we donโt address this need for practitioners in the field,โ said Maciulla.
Yet, even though there is a clear need for practitioners in these areas, few are coming.
โThe veterinary work that I do, that people expect of me, is a lot of traveling, a lot of away from home, a lot of overnights, a lot of traveling after dark. In these areas weโre 40 miles out on a dirt road real commonly. Most of my calls are about 80 miles to get to the ranches,โ said Thrasher. โI seldom ever go on vacation โฆ we have calls almost every holiday.โ
Veterinarians from metropolitan areas often are not attracted to these rural communities.
โIf we look at the demographics of each yearโs starting class, weโre choosing 80-plus percent from metro areas, and consequently, theyโre going to want to go back and practice there,โ said Maciulla.
Another problem is student debt.
According to a study by the AVMA, the average starting salary of veterinarians was $67,000. The average debt of graduating veterinarians was $135,283.
But for a state like Arizona that has no public veterinary school, many students are paying non-resident fees. The average non-resident debt was $187,379 with 20 percent of 2014 graduates reporting debt over $200,000.
โThe cost of veterinary education has gone up tenfold in the last 10 years, and certainly inflation hasnโt matched that. So weโve dug a pretty big hole. And the way to get out of that isnโt to go into rural practice,โ said Maciulla.
Midwestern University, a private school in Glendale, accepted its first cohort of students into its new veterinary medicine program in August 2014. However, the estimated total cost of the four-year program is more than $300,000, according the university.
It is the fifth-most expensive option for Arizonans, according to data from vinfoundation.org.
โThe trouble is that if youโve got a $300,000 debt you just canโt afford to be paid less. You have to go where the highest-paying jobs are,โ said Burgess. โSo even if you wanted to go back to rural Arizona, the system doesnโt enable it, doesnโt allow it.โ
UAโs Burgess believes the best solution is the universityโs proposed veterinary medical school, which could cut education costs enough to make rural food-animal practice a feasible option.
โItโs not rational to go and work in a rural area if your debt is so high that that area canโt afford your salary,โ he said. โYou know, I personally would much rather have a debt of $70,000 with a $50,000 salary, than a debt of $300,000 with a $67,000 salary.โ
Burgess hopes the school will get its accreditation in time to accept students in August.
