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NIVA AGM – a great start to 2022
Yet again this year COVID played havoc with the best-laid plans and NIVA held its second successive Virtual AGM on Wednesday 9th February.
Outgoing President Mark Little welcomed a pleasingly large crowd and summarised the variety of NIVA’s activities for the year – providing input to a plethora of consultations, engaging with issues affecting animal welfare and the interests of the profession, providing representation and support for members, raising money for local charities (£1470 for Vet Support NI and almost £3000 for Air Ambulance NI), and seeking out creative hybrid ways to provide CPD, craic and convivial company when circumstances allowed. Mark thanked all those who had helped him in achieving his aims for a phenomenally busy year (members, sponsors, Council, the officer team, his family and the tireless team at VetNI), before handing over the reins and the very impressive NIVA Chain to new President Fiona McFarland.
Fiona graduated from Bristol in 2004 and started her career in farm practice in Somerset before returning to NI in 2011 to work in Earlswood Veterinary Hospital, where the legendary Des Thompson first encouraged her to become involved with NIVA Council. Fiona has an enormous amount of experience to bring to the twin roles of NIVA and BVA(NI) President. In addition to years on NIVA Council she has served on BVA Policy Committee, been instrumental in setting up Young Vet Network and Vet Support NI, and worked as a locum in over 45 practices in Northern Ireland before taking up her current role in industry as Account Manager Ireland North for IMV Imaging.
Fiona is looking forward to a busy year as we (hopefully) emerge from the pandemic and get to grips with Brexit, workforce issues, climate change and sustainability. She will be ably assisted by Mark, who continues as SVP, and Esther Skelly-Smith, whose election as JVP was ratified by the membership. Susan Cunningham was elected as Public Relations Officer, and Seamus O’Kane and Rachel Davies continue as Treasurer and Secretary respectively. Council members Sean Rooney, Kirsten Dunbar, William Sherrard, Lara Wilson and Ed Taylor are stepping down this year, and were thanked for their hard work. New Council members Aoife Ferris, Patricia Van Veen, Ruth Moreno, Roisin Dickinson, Sharon Verner, Orla McAlister, and an impressive 59 new ordinary members were ratified by the membership and welcomed.
The business part of the meeting being concluded, Fiona introduced the evening’s speaker – Professor Michael Doherty, Dean of UCD Veterinary School, who provided an Educational Perspective on Future Challenges for the Veterinary Profession.
NIVA is extremely grateful to Boehringer Ingelheim for their ongoing support, and particularly sponsorship of this year’s NIVA AGM.
NIVAs “Step out to help out!” challenge – 2021
Answers to some FAQs:
Yes, doing the walks on horseback is allowed!
Our charities? NI Air Ambulance and Vet Support NI.
No, its not too late to join in – these walks will continue all year. Drop VetNI a line if you can’t find the details. We’ll get you signed up and send you a very desirable NIVA snood/buff/neck gaiter thingy so you too can make jokes about walking in the buff!
Submitting photos of your walks isn’t compulsory but it does give you the chance to win a prize 🙂
If you want to join in whilst pushing a lawnmower, who are we to stop you.
Can’t manage the walking? Why not sponsor other walkers instead? the JustGiving page is here.
Yes, group walks with NIVA colleagues are now being planned. Watch your e-mails for details!
RCVS review of ‘under care’ and 24/7 emergency cover
What are the implications of new technologies for both animal health and welfare and veterinary regulation?
What are your views on the provision of 24/7 emergency cover?
How should we interpret an animal being under the care of a veterinary surgeon?
Where does remote consulting (vet-to-client telemedicine) fit into current practice and what are its limitations?
The RCVS launched an online qualitative survey to gain the views and feedback of UK-based veterinary surgeons and veterinary nurses on 19 May 2021 so its YOUR turn to have your say!
An email containing a personalised link to the survey has been sent to rgeistered vets and vet nurses. If you can’t see yours, you can apply to complete the survey by sending an e-mail to [email protected].
The survey closes at 5pm on Wednesday, 16 June 2021. It should take 15-20 minutes to complete, but can be returned to and completed in stages if preferred.
NIVA SPRING MEETING – APOPO.org HeroRATs and HeroDOGs
APOPO is a Belgium-based humanitarian organisation, famous for training Tanzanian rats to save lives across the world. On 28th April NIVA members gathered (virtually) to hear Anna Bouchier, Swiss and European Development Director of the charity, describe its history and current work.
The charity has been training rats to clear minefields in post-conflict regions since 1997. It was the brainchild of Belgian founders Bart Weetjens and Christophe Cox, the former of whom bred pet rats as a hobby and observed minefield problems first-hand while travelling as a student in Angola and Mozambique.
APOPO’s training centre is situated in Morogoro, Tanzania and uses Southern African giant pouched rats (Cricetomys ansorgei). These adaptable, intelligent, social, and mainly nocturnal omnivores typically weigh in at between 1and 1.5kg – 2 or 3 times the size of our local European varieties. They are known for their amazing sense of smell (compensating for poor eyesight) because they use olfactory cues to communicate long distance in the wild, and have been selected for heroRAT training because they are also ubiquitous, resistant to local disease, easy to transport, easy to transfer between trainers, and long enough lived to repay the training investment.
Anna was at pains to point out that animal welfare is at the very heart of all that APOPO do. All the rats are the product of a dedicated breeding programme and extremely well cared for throughout their lives. Training starts with socialisation and habituation from 4 weeks of age and progresses to reward-based operant conditioning, which takes between 9 months and a year in total. Down-time is spent in rich and stimulating play cages or resting in cosy clay-pot nests. Vet checks are regular and natural diet and behaviour are respected, with working hours being early mornings or evenings, and weekdays only. The rats typically live for 6-8 years and only work for as long as they want to. At the first sign of any waning of enthusiasm for the task, they are retired to luxury accommodation at the training centre.
No animal has ever been harmed on active duty. It would be unlikely that a rat would trigger a landmine as they typically require 4-5kg pressure to cause deployment, but it is more impressive that the rats have never missed a mine that has subsequently exploded. Accreditation requires the rats to clear 400 sq m of mines without missing any targets and with no more than one false ground scratching indication. Amazingly, in contrast with humans in a “rat race”, they demonstrate little propensity to cheat to gain reward!
The rats can clear an area the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes, compared to 4 days for a man with a metal detector. They are particularly efficient in short scrub or desert, however the length of their legs proved to be a limitation in dense bush and the jungles of Cambodia, leading to APOPO opening a facility training Technical Survey dogs. These Belgian Shepherds carry GPS backpacks with a microphone and camera, enter dense scrub unaccompanied, and sit to indicate 1 metre from any unexploded ordinance. The dogs may miss targets, but this technique allows large areas to be assessed for contamination before sending rats in to micro-search.
In 20 years APOPO’s heroRATs and heroDOGs have cleared over 108,700 landmines and released millions of square metres of land for safe farming. This work will be ongoing for some time – despite the Ottawa convention, 60 countries have remaining minefields and there were almost 6000 mine-related accidents in 2019, 43% of which involved children.
Ten years in, APOPO’s work diversified into training rats to detect another deadly global threat – TB, in sputum samples. Prior to Covid, TB was the world’s most deadly infectious disease with 1.3 million deaths in 2019 alone. It spreads easily in densely populated areas and, as the leading killer of HIV patients, Is particularly deadly in Africa. In Europe, the gold-standard for diagnosis is culture, which takes a week to produce a result, during which time the patient must isolate. Molecular testing needs expensive hardware, electricity and internet connectivity, so the current African solution is microscopy…which is fairly quick, but only 50% accurate. This is where the rats come in. In 20 minutes a trained rat can assess 100 (heat-treated and therefore safe) samples, and, to date, the program has picked up 20,000 positive TB cases which had slipped through the microscopy net, allowing timely treatment and prevention of further spread to contacts. Fascinatingly, for reasons unclear, the rats are particularly quick and accurate at detecting cases in children.
Future uses for the skills and talents of these fabulous animals seem practically limitless. The scope for detecting other pathogens and diseases is obvious and exciting, as are the prospects for detecting trafficked wildlife, drugs and other contraband, and environmental contaminants. Work is even under way in training “rescueRATs” with tiny smart backpacks to search rubble for survivors.
NIVA would like to thank Elanco for their generous sponsorship of Anna’s talk, and helping to raise awareness of the amazing work of this excellent charity and a much-maligned species. Anyone reading this who isn’t so keen on our long-tailed friends could do worse than visit the APOPO website (https://www.apopo.org/en) – I cannot imagine how even the most determined musophobe would not be beguiled by pictures of these beautiful and intelligent creatures in action, saving human lives.
The Grand NIVA Virtual Village Fete – Class 7
Luke Gamble of Worldwide Veterinary Service is used to assessing pets but nevertheless was almost flummoxed when asked to compare them to their owners. Luke kindly adjudicated the final class of the Virtual Village Fete – Class 7 – Pet most like its owner. Here are the results!
In third place, a good likeness though “not quite hairy enough” – its John Hill entered by Susie Hill. Its hard to believe but Susie says they are both both wilful and difficult at times!
In second place, a merging of dog and owner, its Susie Hill and Annie!
And in first place, a deserving winning entry from Rachael Frew, its Otis and Jeff – but which one is Otis and which one is Jeff?
The similarities are unmistakable! Well done to all entrants in this and all of the other classes. If you had even half the fun compiling your entries that we (VetNI) had opening them, then we must formally declare this Virtual Village Fete a resounding success. Roll on next year’s event!
The Grand NIVA Virtual Village Fete – Class 5
The eagle-eyed amongst you may have realised that there are two NIVA Virtual Village Fete classes whose winners have not been announced. This was due to the busy lifestyle of the judges that we approached. TV vet Luke Gamble of the Worldwide Veterinary Service is obviously a very busy man too, yet he kindly found time to adjudicate Classes 5 and 7 for us. Thanks Luke! Watch his adjudication of both classes HERE.
As a reminder, the lockdown task in Class 5 was to recreate a famous artwork or celebrity photograph using whoever and whatever was available in the home or workplace. One family excelled at this task – its almost a clean sweep!
In joint third place, two entries that both revel in the macabre . . . Susan Cunningham managed to persuade her son Hugh to replicate Death of Marat by Jaques-Louis David and Jo Gibson arranged her family to recreate Caravaggio’s “Salome with the head of John the Baptist”
In second place, another stunning entry from Susan as the Cunningham boys – Hugh, Ralph and Miles – brilliantly re-create the Bronte “sisters” as painted by their brother Branwell.
and in first place (can you spot the trend?!) Susan Cunningham and family trip down the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz. The “real” lion is husband Johnny, taking a break from practising the Welly Darts.
Congratulations to all our entrants, most of whom were Cunninghams – now that’s a family that enjoys dressing up!
The Grand NIVA Virtual Village Fete – Class 4
Covid Cake – now this would have been the class to judge provided all the entries could be tasted! Sadly our celebrity adjudicator had to make his choice from a beautiful range of cakes based entirely on photographic evidence. Our thanks go to chef Paul Rankin for taking the time to judge this class. I’m sure you all have all used some of his recipes or products at one time or another and you can see that he’s a class act in front of the camera from his very watchable adjudication video which can be found HERE.
So . . . in third place, Isla Doherty (5 years old) with a little help from Simon Doherty (much older!)
In second place, Sarah McEvoy (10 years old)
and in first place, Rachael Frew
Don’t they look both beautiful and delicious?! Well done to our winners and to all other entrants.
The Grand NIVA Virtual Village Fete – Class 3
Stepping forward to judge his second fete class is renowned Irish artist Trevor Brown. What a difficult class to judge! It attracted the second highest number of entries including pottery, drawing, photography, flower arranging, crochet, book art and needle felting. Well done Trevor – how ever did you choose your winners from such a varied array of creativity?!
Trevor says: “In third place, Entry 8 – ‘Needle felted mice gathering provisions for miceolation!’ – So many little details and you can see the amount of work that has gone into this scene.
In second place, Entry 11 – Photography. – Most photographs are happy accidents but you can feel Spring from this photo. The lamb looks content and happy in it’s new world.
And the winner is Entry 9 – ‘A pin cushion, hand thrown pot, pit fired to colour using plants from my garden then needle felted scene.’ – The colours are beautiful and the glazes work really well on this piece. You can see it is made by hand and suits its purpose well.”
So . . . in third place, Eve Young
In second place, Rhonda Shiels
In first place, Eve Young
Congratulations to ALL entrants – we knew you were great vets but you kept your artistic talents hidden from us until now!
African Swine Fever (ASF)
DAERA is currently running a UK-wide campaign to raise awareness of the risks of African Swine Fever (ASF) to pigs. Its important that they reach all pig keepers with their messages. Commercial pig keepers are aware of the risks of ASF but the level of awareness amongst small holders/pet pig keepers may not be so high.
DAERA is gather more information which will better inform them on how to support these sectors. They have created a survey which specifically targets small scale pig keepers. Please share this with your full veterinary team and ask them to share the survey with small scale pig holders/pet pig owners.
The survey can be found here and more information is available on the Defra website at the following link Small scale pig keepers ASF survey
DAERA is grateful for your ongoing support with proactive messaging regarding vigilance, early reporting of suspected disease and importance of maintaining biosecurity. Anything we can do to improve our communications will help in keeping this devastating disease out of NI.
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