Citizens' Daily Lobby

This week, the AR House Agriculture, Forestry, and Economic Development Committee is set to review a bill that will substantially change the veterinary practice act and could have wideranging consequences for the welfare of farm animals in our state.  The bill, HB1055, will allow non-veterinarians to perform fee-based veterinary acupuncture, chiropractic, and equine dentistry.  Acupuncture and chiropractic require extensive knowedge of anatomy, and non-veterinarians, even human practictioners, do not have the requisite knowledge to adequately perform  these treatments.  In addition, the bill specifically designates castration, dehorning, pregnancy checking, and artificial insemination, vaccination, and other services to be performed by the lay public.   Because most of these procedures require  surgical and medical training or advanced technical skills, allowing those not trained in professional veterinary school to perform these acts will certainly endanger the welfare of our food animals.  Make no mistake, food animal welfare is also a public health issue, and putting these valuable animals into the care of non-licensed lay people could have far-reaching, negative consequences.   For these reasons, and because such an act would turn procedures that veterinarians have mastered after years of training and experience over to the non-licensed, the Arkansas Veterinary Medical Association is strongly opposed to this legislation. 

It is true that there is currently a shortage of food animal veterinarians.  The answer is not to turn the field over to the untrained.  The answer is to fund more positions and residencies in food animal medicine at veterinary schools.  Incentives to make the field more attractive in terms of lifestyle and salary would also help.  What will not help, and, indeed, will have the opposite effect, is to threaten the practice of the few veterinarians who have accepted the challenge of keeping Arkansas’ livestock healthy.