Baldwin Measure To Protect Public Health Passes House

Press Release

Baldwin Measure To Protect Public Health Passes House

The House of Representatives last night passed legislation authored by Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) that confronts public health threats by investing in the public health veterinary workforce. The Veterinary Public Health Education and Workforce Act (H.R. 2999) ensures that existing programs for training our nation's public health workforce includes public health veterinarians, including workforce grants and participation in a federal loan repayment program. The measure now goes to the Senate.

"Veterinarians are our frontline of defense against potentially deadly disease outbreaks," said Congresswoman Baldwin. "The recent cases of salmonella from tainted eggs serve as the latest reminder that diseases can spread rapidly from animals to humans, often with deadly consequences. We need to better support public health veterinarians who keep our food supply and our families safe," Baldwin said.

For more than 100 years, veterinarians have been responsible for some of the most significant advances in public health, including the near eradication of diseases such as Tuberculosis and Brucellosis in domestic animals. In recent years, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Monkeypox, West Nile Virus, Lyme disease, Avian Flu, and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (Mad Cow Disease) and Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) have had a significant impact on public health, and veterinarians have played a vital role in the identification, diagnosis, control, and surveillance of all of these diseases.

"The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) applauds Congresswoman Baldwin for working so hard to get this legislation passed, because it will help fight a shortage of veterinarians in the public health workforce. I urge the Senate to follow her leadership and take action as soon as possible," said Dr. Larry Kornegay, president of the AVMA. "Congresswoman Baldwin understands that veterinarians are a key part of our public health workforce. Over the last 25 years, 75 percent of all the emerging diseases in people were zoonotic, meaning they were diseases that spread from animals to humans," Kornegay said.

A February 2009 report to Congress by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) reveals a worsening shortage of large-animal veterinarians that the American Veterinary Medical Association calls a "threat to national security."

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