Placement of Post Doctoral Fellows at Veterinary Colleges Proves Successful

Farmscape for April 9, 2013

The research coordinator with the Canadian Swine Health Board reports a just completed program which placed post doctoral fellows into positions at six Canadian veterinary colleges has been highly successful.
In an effort to bolster the renewal of manpower within the swine health industry, the Canadian Swine Health Board funded the placement of Post Doctoral Fellows, young scientists who have recently completed their Ph.D. programs, into three year positions at the Universities of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Guelph, Montreal, and Prince Edward Island and the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization.
Canadian Swine Health Board  research coordinator Dr. Al Theede says, with that program now wrapped up, many of these scientists have decided to continue working in the swine health field and a couple have moved to other research programs including faculty positions at veterinary colleges.

Clip-Dr. Al Theede-Canadian Swine Health Board:
I think the long term benefit is that we have more manpower directed to swine health problems and ultimately that benefits everyone.
It benefits the veterinarians because they have more information to work with, they have better laboratory services for example.
I think it benefits producers because there is better diagnostics and just more people to work on their problems.
That spins off to the maintenance of the health of the Canadian swine herd and I think we all recognize that healthy pigs produce quality food and then that spins off to both food safety locally but exports markets and just a whole range of things.
Just having more manpower focused on that and sort of younger and more invigorated people I think is the positive part.

Dr. Theede notes we've seen several research or academic papers being published by these scientists, their work is starting to get out into the literature and is being recognized and that will be a plus for the whole swine health industry across the country.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.


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