In 2011, AASV partnered with National Pork Board (NPB) to train veterinarians and students as Operation Main Street (OMS) speakers in order to get speakers to all vet schools with messages about the swine industry and hot topics such as animal welfare. In March, 17 AASV members were trained as OMS speakers and have been travelling to vet schools to give talks to student groups. We need to ensure that all veterinarians, regardless of career path, have some exposure to what really happens in the swine industry. The current response from veterinary schools to host speakers has been great and we are reaching a large audience. With this current success, we intend to continue and expand this project.
NPB oversees all of the training, expense and scheduling efforts for this on-going project. We would like to train another class of OMS speakers at the annual AASV meeting this coming March in Denver. We would especially like to train some speakers that reside in areas closer to vet schools where we currently do not have any trained OMS speakers. We are planning on holding a training session Saturday morning March 10, 2012 from 7:00-1:30 at the conference hotel.
If you are interested in participating in this training, please let Amy Woods (amy.woods@animalhealthinternational.com) know as soon as possible. If you have further questions, you can ask me or I can put you in touch with one of the AASV members that has been giving OMS talks to several vet schools this past year.