Recently qualified Veterinary Surgeons welcomed to AFBI Omagh
On the 15th of October the Omagh laboratory of AFBI Disease Surveillance and Investigation Branch welcomed recently qualified veterinary surgeons to their facility.
Vets from locally in Northern Ireland, but also from England and Wales visited the branch to learn from the onsite veterinary research officers about how they provide a diagnostic service to local veterinary practices and how services such as these can help them improve their work ‘in the field’.
The importance of the labs role in passive disease surveillance was also discussed including how AFBI fit into the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affair’s (DAERA’s) emergency disease response, reporting of notifiable diseases and antimicrobial resistance surveillance.
The visitors were given a tour of the facility and then shown postmortem demonstrations. Postmortem findings were both topical and interesting with pneumonia evident in a recently housed calf which had also evidence of lungworm and an unusual case of acorn toxicity in a ewe. Acorn toxicity is a rare form of poisoning which has been seen in higher numbers this autumn in the UK and Ireland given the increased abundance of acorns.
The morning finished with refreshments and further informal discussion.