Today’s vets need to regain lost values

2011 was World Veterinary Year and veterinarians not only celebrated 250 years since Claude Baurgelat was authorised to open the first veterinary school in Lyon — considered to be the beginning of veterinary science — it was also the year that rinderpest was declared worldwide eradicated.

There are also other remarkable developments in veterinary science. Surgeons are now performing regularly successful operations that would have been unheard of 50 or even 30 years ago.

But by putting more and more emphasis on science and new technologies, veterinarians have lost the values portrayed by Alf Wright’s James Herriot as committed and caring professionals, working tireless for all animals great and small — an image veterinarians all over the world loved to be connected with.