The creation of the Department of Population Medicine at the Ontario Veterinary College

In 1987 the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC), University of Guelph, inaugurated the Department of Population Medicine, beginning a new era in the College’s approach to veterinary medical education, research and health care. The creation of the Department was the product of wider changes in the nature of livestock agriculture, the growing importance of population level health management in veterinary practice in Canada and elsewhere, and strong support from within the College. Population level preventive medicine became increasingly important over the second half of the 20th century as the intensification of livestock production combined with tightening profit margins for producers made the prevention of disease and increased productivity vital to the success of livestock agriculture. Outbreaks of new production limiting diseases among livestock populations can wreak havoc on agricultural economies and cause substantial financial losses for producers. Within OVC a number of influential faculty members, including Drs. Wayne Martin, Bob Curtis, Alan Meek, Bob Friendship, Ken Leslie, Bill Mitchell, and Dean Ole Nielsen helped lay the foundation for, and/or were the driving forces behind the creation of the Department. Their work helped put OVC in a leadership position in terms of the growth of population medicine in North America. Several of these faculty members were interviewed and their thoughts have been incorporated into this paper.

As a consequence of these developments OVC reconsidered its approach to livestock animal medicine and created the Department of Population Medicine to systematically teach and perform research and extension work in farm animal health management and welfare, epidemiology, public health, food protection, and theriogenology.

The intensification of livestock production, especially from the 1960s onwards, meant that food animal veterinarians needed to re-orient their practices to serve the new focus on herd health, which emphasized preventive medicine as an effective response to tight profit margins for producers. Producers were forced to increase productivity to keep pace with the increasing costs of agricultural production, as the intensification of agriculture led to increased costs of farm machinery and land, due in part also to rapid urbanization and the spread of human populations over agricultural lands in places such as Ontario. Such tight profit margins meant that veterinarians needed to provide services that would be economically beneficial to producers as they changed their focus from individual animals to the herd as a whole (1). Many veterinarians recognized the financial constraints facing large-scale livestock producers and throughout the 1960s and 1970s began to advocate herd health management as a way to provide cost-effective veterinary services to livestock producers.

Beginning in the early 1960s, the Ontario Veterinary College, with the assistance of the Livestock Branch of the Ontario Department of Agriculture, began a Specific Pathogen-Free (SPF) pig program to “create a nucleus of high quality pure-bred certified herds from which other secondary herds can be established easily and economically” (2). These pigs were seen as potentially able to “break the cycle of infection at the moment of birth.” While there were high start-up costs, long-term savings would accrue from decreased drug costs and mortality rates compared to conventional herds (3). Specific Pathogen-Free researcher M.K. Abelseth noted that “the practicing veterinarian should be closely associated with the SPF programme” (4). Veterinarians provided farmers with advice on topics such as sanitation and nutrition, and by 1964 it was reported that veterinarians with SPF herd clients “have co-operated to the fullest extent in endeavoring to keep the herd health status at a high level” (3).

In 1974 Dr. O.M. Radostits (a faculty member at the OVC in the early 1960s before moving to the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan in 1964) noted that the modern livestock producer is “business oriented and applies the principles of agricultural economics to his everyday task of allocating resources to achieve optimum returns.” He argued that the high cost of raising stock such as cattle and pigs meant that “progressive” producers would increasingly demand high quality herd health services from their veterinarians. In addition, Canadian and American veterinary colleges, which traditionally focused on individual animals, would need to teach herd level medicine to meet this new demand (5).

A mid-1970s report in Ontario recommended a similar approach. William A. Stewart, the Ontario Minister of Agriculture and Food, commissioned Dr. E.H. Botterell to study the state of livestock animal health management. The Botterell Report (6) concluded that “the food animal industry and veterinary medicine are entering the era of Maintenance of Health Programs in support of intensive production of food-producing farm animals (herd health).” Botterell found that the intensive production of livestock animals was making “new and heavy demands” for preventive medicine programs and for services to help producers manage such things as nutrition, fertility, and humane housing (5). While Botterell found that the emergency, or “fire-engine” approach to veterinary farm practice was well taken care of in Ontario, due in large part to the long hours worked by livestock veterinarians, “relatively little has been achieved in the direction of a comprehensive system of Maintenance of Health Programs for food producing animals” (6).

The result of this was “substantial economic loss due to disease in livestock and poultry” (6). The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food estimated that animal diseases cost the Ontario economy over $100 million in 1973. These losses could be reduced through health management and preventive veterinary medicine programs. For example, veterinarians could assist swine producers in managing and preventing or reducing potentially devastating outbreaks of diarrhea due to Escherichia coli, especially among newborn pigs. One way of doing this was through an E. coli vaccine developed by OVC faculty member Dr. Michael R. Wilson in the early 1970s (7). This vaccine remains in use and its administration has become standard practice for all sows prior to farrowing.

Herd health was a lesson that Martin, one of the founders of population medicine at OVC, learned in the 1970s from pioneering veterinary epidemiologist Dr. Calvin Schwabe at the University of California Davis (UCD). Schwabe argued that “preventive veterinary medicine of the future will largely be a form of on-going on-farm research, based upon surveillance” (Interview with Wayne Martin by Kevin Woodger and Cate Dewey, March 2, 2015). Often referred to as the “father of veterinary epidemiology,” Dr. Schwabe founded the UCD Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine (the first of its kind in any veterinary school) in the late 1960s and was a strong advocate of the concept of one medicine. Schwabe believed that animal and human medicine are intimately linked and veterinarians could make meaningful contributions to the field of human health and public health (9). Indeed, the growth of veterinary epidemiology mirrored a similar trend in human health. In human medicine in the 1970s and 1980s an increased emphasis was placed on epidemiological methods, health promotion and preventive medicine (10).

The OVC introduced a dairy herd health program in 1960 when 2 Clinical Studies faculty members, Drs. Jack Cote and Bob Curtis, began enrolling herds. Twenty years into the program, Cote reported that “herd health practice has been a very satisfying aspect of veterinary medicine and a profitable and valued service to our clients.” Aspects of OVC’s herd health program included monthly visits to participating farms for physical examinations, implementing good recordkeeping practices which would allow the veterinarian to quickly find necessary information, immunizations against viral diseases, and supplying farmers with and advising them on the use of veterinary drugs. Cote concluded that for farmers who took full advantage of the program, returns on investment were as high as 300% to 500% (11).

Curtis was himself an early and influential advocate for herd health and preventive medicine. In 1971, Curtis argued that preventive medicine programs, especially if subsidized by the government, could be of great benefit to agricultural production and allow the large animal veterinarian to move beyond the “emergency service approach” (12). He noted that the veterinarian, “by his unique training which enables him to diagnose disease has the broadest background to implement preventive medicine programs” (12). While the veterinarian may not be an expert in fields such as nutrition, agricultural engineering, or animal science, Curtis believed that “he is the man best qualified to recognize disease as a cause of lost production and to pinpoint the contributing factors such as inadequate nutrition, faulty housing and management” (12). For these reasons, Curtis believed that veterinarians would be the perfect liaisons “between the producers and the experts in the various disciplines mentioned” (12). Although he would leave OVC in 1985 for the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island, Curtis was “at the forefront” of fostering relations with associated producer groups, industry partners, and commodity boards,” in support of preventive medicine (13). According to Meek, Curtis influenced the changing philosophy of veterinary medicine, which created a climate amenable to a Department of Population Medicine (Interview with Alan Meek by KW, March 2, 2015).

The 1976 Botterell Report, faculty advocates such as Curtis and Cote, Martin’s experiences at UCD, and the growing OVC herd health program led to discussions at OVC about creating a department focused on population level medicine. Dr. Bill Mitchell, a faculty member in the Department of Veterinary Microbiology and Immunology (VMI) was also influential. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Mitchell taught a Public Health course in the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) program, which incorporated aspects of applied epidemiology. He also stressed to his colleagues in VMI that “there was more to understanding and controlling disease than the microbe,” and was an advocate for the use of epidemiology in public health and in government efforts at controlling diseases such as bovine tuberculosis and brucellosis (Interview with Wayne Martin by Kevin Woodger and Cate Dewey, March 2, 2015). Furthermore, Mitchell helped convince Schwabe to take on Wayne Martin as a PhD student in 1970 and he was instrumental in supporting the hiring of both Martin and Alan Meek (after he completed a PhD in epidemiology at the University of Melbourne) into VMI in the mid-1970s, changing the “face” of OVC, as Wayne Martin put it (Interview with Wayne Martin by Kevin Woodger and Cate Dewey, March 2, 2015).

By the 1980s, OVC had 4 departments; Biomedical Sciences, Pathology, Clinical Studies and VMI. In the summer of 1981, the OVC Dean, Dr. D.C. Maplesden, appointed a committee of OVC faculty, which was chaired by Dr. Gordon Ball, Associate Dean of the Ontario Agricultural College, with a membership of Curtis, Meek, W.H. Harris, and J.O.D. Slocombe, to investigate what the College should do in the area of preventive medicine. Settling on the term health management rather than preventive medicine, the committee sought to “assess the needs of the profession and society in general in the area of health management,” and to “recommend how these needs might be best fulfilled by OVC in its responsibilities for teaching, research and extension” (14). The committee defined health management as a concern for the health of animal populations and with the development of programs to maintain health in order to optimize production efficiency and produce high quality animal food products under humane conditions (14).

Over the course of its investigation, the Committee decided that the creation of a Department of Health Management would be the best way to generate producer awareness of the importance of preventive medicine, and to facilitate teaching, research, and extension work in health management. They envisioned faculty joining the new department from relevant areas across the College, including reproduction and swine, ruminant, and poultry medicine (from Clinical Studies) as well as epidemiology and public health (from VMI). They also called for computer scientists and biometricians, as it was perceived that the new department would need to manipulate large volumes of data concerning the health of client herds. It was recognized that information management on herd health was becoming increasingly important. This was reflected in the Committee’s recommendations for the potential department’s teaching program which would include an emphasis on epidemiology and the statistical analysis of the wealth of information (including nutrition, genetics, and housing) needed to determine the cause of disease outbreaks and production concerns among animal populations (14).

Data generation and collection would also be key to the department’s research program. The Committee noted that the general absence of health management programs in Ontario resulted in a dearth of data on which OVC researchers could base technical health management advice. They noted that production diseases were increasingly prominent and that veterinary services should be tailored to treating and controlling these. With that in mind, the Committee outlined a research program for the department that would center around “the interrelationships between the various components and levels of livestock production including husbandry/management, production, producer objectives and disease” (14).

According to Martin, the findings of the Committee on Health Management supported the general desire amongst faculty to act on the recommendations of the Botterell Report and “do things differently” (Interview with Wayne Martin by Kevin Woodger and Cate Dewey, March 2, 2015). In the late 1970s, Martin and Meek (who was Chair of VMI in the early 1980s) were becoming increasingly aware that their work studying populations was an awkward fit in the VMI department that focused mainly on diseases of individual animals and, according to Meek, in many cases “not even…the individual animal,” but more on the cellular level (15).

After the Committee released its report in April 1982, a faculty vote was taken on the motion to create a Department of Health Management. According to Martin, the mood among his colleagues at the time was, “oh yea this will pass and we’ll move ahead with this” (Interview with Wayne Martin by Kevin Woodger and Cate Dewey, March 2, 2015). Dr. Friendship, who was at that time a faculty member specializing in swine diseases in the Department of Clinical Studies, recalled in an interview that the proposed department was “sort of the dominant talk in the coffee room.” He had seen the proposed department as a way to secure the place of food animals in the College in the face of the growing popularity of small animal medicine (Interview with Bob Friendship by KW, March 2, 2015). Even with this support, the motion to create the department failed. Martin notes that the failure of the Department of Health Management motion came as a surprise to most of his colleagues, although not to him because he had voted against the creation of the department. Despite the growing calls for a more herd-oriented approach to livestock medicine, Martin believed that the concept of herd health management was too narrow, with the connotation that public health and zoonoses would not be incorporated into the department’s work (Interview with Wayne Martin by Kevin Woodger and Cate Dewey, March 2, 2015). Martin would take a leading role in advocating for a broader definition of population medicine during the years between the vote on a Department of Health Management and a vote on the founding of the Department of Population Medicine.

Both Martin and Friendship agree that there was a good deal of misunderstanding within OVC about the concept of health management, especially among individual animal-oriented faculty members. Friendship recalls that within Clinical Studies, many of the proponents of individual animal medicine did not understand that it “was ridiculous to bring a cow or a pig into the clinic and have the students do a big workup on it the way you would a pet.” In the context of intensive livestock operations, “if you’re going to bring the animal in to diagnose the situation you would take them straight to the postmortem room and try to make a diagnosis as quickly as you can because there’s another thousand of them out in the barn that are dying of the same thing” (Interview with Bob Friendship by KW, March 2, 2015).

After the 1982 vote that rejected the creation of a Department of Health Management, conversations and initiatives continued to advance population level health management. Particularly important was creation of a coursework Master of Science program in epidemiology by Martin, with the assistance of Meek, within VMI in 1982. The program was designed to “prepare students for participation in the organization of animal disease control programs at the farm and provincial and federal government levels” (15). Over the next several years, this program would become internationally renowned and was matched only by Dr. Calvin Schwabe’s veterinary epidemiology program at UCD. Martin’s program attracted some of the best students from OVC and around the world to study epidemiology. The success of Martin’s graduate program in epidemiology was a key factor in convincing OVC faculty to support population medicine in 1987. For a list of all epidemiology-focused graduate students between 1979 and 1998 (including those from VMI in the coursework MSc in epidemiology and those who were graduate students in the Department of Population Medicine during its first 10 years of operation) see Table 1.

Table 1.

Epidemiology-focused Graduate Students, 1979–1998

Name	Yeara	Degreeb	Position/Institution or Agencyc	Country
Hollis Erb	1979	PhD	Professor/Cornell University	USA
Ian Dohoo	1982	PhD	Professor/University of Prince Edward Island	Canada
Scott McEwen	1985	DVSc	Professor/University of Guelph	Canada
David Waltner-Toews	1985	PhD	Professor/University of Guelph	Canada
Nonie Smart	1987	MSc	Senior Scientist/Canada Food Inspection Agency	Canada
Kenneth Bateman	1988	MSc	Professor/University of Guelph	Canada
Brenda Bonnett	1988	PhD	CEO, International Partnership for Dogs	Canada
Neil Anderson	1989	MSc	Lead Veterinarian, Bovine Health and Welfare, OMAFRAd	Canada
Helen Drolia	1989	MSc	Veterinary Practitioner/Greece	Greece
Gary Halbert	1989	MSc	Analyst and Scientific Advisor/CFIAe	Canada
David Sandals	1989	MSc	Professor/University of Guelph	Canada
David Alves	1990	PhD	Deputy Chief Veterinarian of Ontario/OMAFRA	Canada
John McDermott	1990	PhD	Director/CGIARf Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health, International Food Policy Research Institute	USA
W. Bruce McNabb	1990	PhD	Senior Scientist/Animal Health and Welfare Branch, OMAFRA	Canada
Jonathan Morgan	1990	MSc	Manager/CFIA	Canada
Cord Heuer	1991	MSc	Professor/EpiCentre, Massey University	New Zealand
Jeff Wilson	1991	PhD	President/Novometrix Research Inc	Canada
Cate Dewey	1992	PhD	Professor and Department Chair/University of Guelph	Canada
Gordon Doig	1992	MSc	Senior Lecturer/University of Sydney	Australia
Pilar Donado-Godoy	1992	MSc	Scientist/CORPOICA, CBBg	Colombia
Armin Elbers	1992	MSc	Senior Scientist/Central Veterinary Institute	Netherlands
George Gitau	1992	MSc	Professor/University of Nairobi	Kenya
Carol Mulder	1992	MSc	Provincial Lead, Quality Improvement Decision Support Program, AFHTOh	Canada
Carl Ribble	1992	PhD	Professor/University of Calgary	Canada
Dominique Baronet	1993	MSc	Director of Development & Regulations, MAPAQi	Canada
John Deen	1993	PhD	Professor/University of Minnesota	USA
Andrea Ellis	1993	MSc	Scientist/CFEZIDj, PHACk	Canada
Patrick Hearne	1993	MSc	Co-owner, Hearn Veterinary Services	Canada
George Hillis	1993	MSc	Veterinarian/East Oshawa Animal Hospital	Canada
Julia Keenliside	1993	MSc	Epidemiologist/Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development	Canada
John Griffin	1994	MSc	SSVIj/Department of Agriculture and Food	Ireland
Mutsuyo Kadohira	1994	PhD	Professor/Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine	Japan
Ronny Mudigdo	1994	MSc	Director for Animal Diseases Investigation Center Maros	Indonesia
Frank Pollari	1994	PhD	Senior Epidemiologist/CFEZID, PHAC	Canada
Bambang Sumiarto	1994	MSc	Professor/Gadjah Mada University	Indonesia
André Busato	1995	MSc	Professor/University of Bern	Switzerland
Abdelhamid Elfadil	1995	PhD	Professor/Sudan University of Science and Technology	Sudan
George Gunn	1995	MSc	Professor/Scotland’s Rural College	Scotland
Jack Halip	1995	MSc	President/Professional Animal Behavior Associates Inc.	Canada
David Kelton	1995	PhD	Professor/University of Guelph	Canada
Dean Middleton	1995	MSc	Senior Public Health Epidemiologist/Public Health Ontario	Canada
Parminder Raina	1995	PhD	Professor/McMaster University	Canada
Sonja Saksida	1995	MSc	CEO/British Columbia Centre for Aquatic Health Sciences	Canada
Nathaniel Tablante	1995	MSc	Professor/University of Maryland	USA
Paul Valle	1995	MSc	Professor/Norwegian School of Veterinary Science	Norway
Cindy Adams	1996	PhD	Professor/University of Calgary	Canada
Peter Buck	1996	MSc	Senior Public Health Epidemiologist, PHAC	Canada
Hugo Dunlop	1996	PhD	Veterinarian, Chris Richards Associates Swine Veterinary Consultants	Australia
Muhamad Sopian Johar	1996	MSc	Epidemiologist/Ministry of Agriculture	Malaysia
George Nasinyama	1996	PhD	Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research Innovation and Extension/KIUl	Uganda
Rita Nespeca	1996	MSc	Associate Director Data Management/ProNAi Therapeutics	Canada
Christine Power	1996	MSc	Professor/Institute of Child Health, University College London	England
Asep Saefuddin	1996	PhD	Rector/Trilogi University	Indonesia
Jan M. Sargeant	1996	PhD	Director, Centre for Public Health & Zoonoses, University of Guelph	Canada
Nathalie Bruneau	1997	PhD	National Manager Aquatic Surveillance & Epidemiology, CFIA	Canada
Abdunaser Dayhum	1997	MSc	Professor/University of Tripoli	Libya
Almabrouk Fares	1997	MSc	Professor/University of Tripoli	Libya
Carolyn Hewson	1997	PhD	Professor/University of Prince Edward Island	Canada
Paul Innes	1997	MSc	Manager, Veterinary Science and Policy, OMAFRA	Canada
Pascal Michel	1997	PhD	Chief Science Officer, PHAC	Canada
Carol Poland	1997	MSc	Professional Development Veterinarian/Hill’s Canada	Canada
Siti Ramanoon	1997	MSc	Senior Lecturer/Universiti Putra Malaysia	Malaysia
John VanLeeuwen	1997	PhD	Professor/University of Prince Edward Island	Canada
Patrick Boerlin	1998	MSc	Professor/University of Guelph	Canada
Joseph Mallia	1998	PhD	Professor/Institute of Agriculture, University of Malta	Malta
Chris O’Callaghan	1998	PhD	Sr. Investigator/Canadian Clinical Trials Group; Professor, Queen’s University	Canada
H. Morgan Scott	1998	PhD	Professor/Texas A&M University	USA
Gary Teare	1998	PhD	Saskatchewan’s Health Quality Council	Canada
Marieke Wevers	1998	MSc	Owner/Foothills Veterinary Services	Canada

^aYear degree was awarded.

^bHighest degree received from Department of Population Medicine.

^cCurrent position or last position before retirement based on publicly available information.

^dOMAFRA — Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

^eCFIA — Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

^FCGIAR — Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

^gCORPOICA, CBB — Corporación Colombiana de Investigación Agropecuaria, Centro de Biotecnologia y Bioindustria.

^hAFHRP — Association of Family Health Teams of Ontario.

ⁱMAPAQ — Le ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation du Québec.

^jCFEZID — Centre for Foodborne, Environmental and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases.

^kPHAC — Public Health Agency of Canada.

^lKIU — Kampala International University.

In addition, a number of Clinical Studies faculty, such as Leslie, Curtis, and Friendship, were demonstrating how epidemiology could be integrated into health management. They worked to convince veterinarians, veterinary students, and producers of the value of this approach. For example, Leslie, often alongside Curtis, carried out research evaluating the efficacy of treatments and determining the sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic tests and measuring production parameters in dairy cattle.

They were joined by Martin and Meek from VMI, who had become increasingly assertive in their opinion that a more formalized approach to population medicine was necessary. Despite the freedom to pursue their own research, the epidemiologists were more likely to work with food animal faculty members in Clinical Studies, such as Leslie and Curtis, than the microbiologists, virologists, and immunologists of their own department (8). As Friendship recalled, the food animal faculty and epidemiologists increasingly recognized the complementarity of their work. Food animal clinicians noted that proper feeding, ventilation, and proper sanitation and hygiene practices could prevent many of the diseases found in their patients. They began to see many livestock diseases as “multi-vectoral” and multi-factorial and opened up space for epidemiologists to “do their very structured studies and prove [what] the risk factor for [a] disease was,” and demonstrate “the value of epidemiology to point out what…the clinicians were observing in the field, that the two went rather well together” (Interview with Bob Friendship by KW, March 2, 2015).

In 1982 and 1983, faculty responsible for swine health in Clinical Studies, including Drs. Bob Friendship and Mike Wilson, carried out a large “Wintario” study to examine swine herd productivity in Ontario and provide a pool of data from which other producers and veterinarians could draw to compare their own herds’ productivity. Reporting in 1986, the study provided an early demonstration of the value and importance of many of the tools and methods on which the Department of Population Medicine would later rely. The researchers noted that “records of productivity are essential for efficient (or cost effective) health management” (16). They found that “in the absence of clinical disease, and where suboptimal productivity is the problem, productivity data and corresponding reference values are effective means for identifying problem areas” (16). The researchers undertook weekly and biweekly farm visits in order to collect the data recorded by participating producers. The study also provides an early example of the use and importance of computer technology, including the use of computerized production records, in health management work. The researchers typed the data collected on the farm into a “hand-held, programmed data logger and transmitted through a modem (via telephone) to a central microcomputer,” for statistical analysis (16). The researchers concluded that “a wide range in swine productivity…exists between Ontario farms,” with “a significant number of pork producers…operating at a level far below their productivity potential” (16). However, they also found that there was “great potential…in the industry for increasing the efficiency of farms,” especially if producers made wider use of existing health management techniques (16).

In 1986, noting the increasing collaborations between the epidemiologists and the food animal faculty, the newly appointed Dean, Dr. Ole Neilsen, supported by the Dean’s Council, appointed a steering committee co-chaired by population medicine advocates Martin and Leslie, to investigate the creation of a Department of Population Medicine. The committee believed that “clinical veterinary medicine can be divided…into two broad streams; one that is primarily oriented to individual patients and one to populations” (17). They found that at OVC individual patient medicine “has flourished” (17). Population medicine, however, had been slower to develop due to the relatively recent recognition of the importance of veterinary epidemiology, particularly to “modern food animal production and regulatory medicine” (17). Whereas the previously proposed Department of Health Management carried the implication of having a focus strictly limited to livestock, from the beginning, Martin, Leslie, and the committee sought to outline a department with a broader scope. For example, they extended the benefits of veterinary epidemiology to wildlife, laboratory animals, environmental toxicology and public health (17).

The committee used a definition of population medicine that incorporated health management, but also the broader concept championed by Martin. They defined population medicine as the “study of the frequency, distribution, and cost of disease, and the interrelationships between and among disease, management, environment and productivity” (18). Reflecting the importance of health management, the definition incorporated “directed action (i.e., applied prevention and control strategies) for the management of health and control of disease in animal populations” (18). By contrast, the earlier health management approach focused more on preventive medicine, with less consideration given to the relationships between disease and the other factors outlined by the committee (14).

As outlined by Martin, Leslie, and the rest of the committee, the proposed Department of Population Medicine’s main responsibility would be the collection of “data on the distribution, causes, and costs of disease (including abnormal behavior) in animal populations and to develop control strategies based on that knowledge.” They foresaw a department that would emphasize the key roles played by environment, population structure, animal behavior and animal husbandry and management in determining health and disease. To do this, the department would take epidemiology as a key discipline (18). The committee envisioned a department that would “bring together those who are, or desire to be, involved in a population-based, quantitative, holistic approach to studies of health and disease” (18).

An OVC faculty vote on the creation of a new Department of Population Medicine was taken in the spring of 1987, with faculty members voting in favor of the new department, and Martin was appointed as the first Department Chair (14). Faculty involved in the Department’s founding, such as Martin, Meek, and Friendship, now generally agree that the proposals and debates that preceded and surrounded the initial proposal for a Department of Health Management helped lay the groundwork for the approved Department of Population Medicine and convinced faculty of the need for a new approach to food animal medicine (Interview with Wayne Martin by Kevin Woodger and Cate Dewey, March 2, 2015).

While there was some caution on the part of the wider Canadian veterinary profession to not lose sight of the individual animal in favor of the herd, population medicine was cited as a necessity given the reality of the intensive livestock economy (19,20). For example, Martin and Drs. John McDermott, and David Alves argued that there was a lack of expertise in herd health within the Canadian veterinary profession. They noted that when dealing with livestock at the population level, “the risk of disease or treatment success, for an individual in a herd, isn’t independent of risks for the other animals in the herd.” Management decisions, such as vaccination programs must be made based on how it will benefit the herd as a whole. Furthermore, such decisions can only be made after comparing data from similar herds so treated. They noted, however, that “our track record as a profession, in scientifically testing these herd level decisions, is rather poor” (21).

The Department of Population Medicine initially had 23 faculty, 16 staff, and 23 graduate students. It was divided into 5 primary research areas: farm animal health management, epidemiology and biometrics, public health and food protection, theriogenology (reproduction), and ethology (animal behavior) (22). Some individuals questioned the inclusion of the theriogenologists because of their focus on individual animals. However, their efforts to improve production efficiency by improving reproduction efficiency “without compromising the welfare of the animal,” fit with the Department’s overall goals (14,22).

Health management was a core discipline of the new department (as enshrined in the department’s mission statement), and most faculty who joined at the beginning worked in health management. The farm animal health management section worked with dairy and beef cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs, divided into separate subsections for ruminants and swine. The College’s poultry specialists chose not to join the department, in part because of the importance of pathology to the poultry industry (14). However 2 poultry epidemiologists later joined Population Medicine, Dr. Jean Pierre Vaillancourt, from 1990 to 1996, and then Dr. Michele Guerin from 2007 to the present. The farm animal health management section was tasked with carrying out teaching as well as the practical work of health management and disease prevention, examining the factors that affected farm animal health, and devising tools to control them.

In general, the health management group was responsible for teaching, including the health management areas of the DVM curriculum. This consisted of lectures, laboratories, and practical exercises in herd health and population medicine. There was also a 2-week clinical rotation in ruminant field service plus a 1-week clinical rotation in swine field service for all final year veterinary students (23). According to Leslie, the group’s extension education work, which included faculty talks to breeders’ and producers’ associations, helped fulfill the Department’s “responsibility to the large animal community in Ontario.” Furthermore, as with dairy, the swine area emphasized the importance of economics in the DVM curriculum so that upon entering practice, veterinarians could “make a valuable contribution to swine producers” (Interview with Kerry Lissemore by KW, March 2, 2015). Through the department’s DVM teaching, generations of veterinarians have graduated into health management practice, making a huge impact on the health, welfare, and productivity of livestock on Canadian farms.

Epidemiology was primarily concerned with the “study of the distribution and determinants of health and disease in animal populations,” using the quantitative tools of biometrics (22). Computer technologies were key to the epidemiology and biometrics group. Computers and epidemiology were seen as essential for the Department to be able to collect, manage, manipulate, and interpret herd health data in support of faculty research and producer-clients. Computers were also seen as important veterinary student teaching tools, as they helped students learn “how to evaluate a herd on a population basis and how to interpret data as a first step in making proper recommendations about health management to their clients” (18). This included setting goals in collaboration with clients and measuring whether they achieved the targets. This was done before and during each herd health visit. In 1989 Kerry Lissemore explained that computers had greatly enhanced veterinarians’ ability to monitor herd health. He noted that as a key part of herd health and the “continual assessment of deviations of actual herd performance from targets of performance,” computers have “reduced the labour required by the veterinarian and the farmer in the repetitive tasks related to data preparation and analysis” (24).

The research emphasis within the new department was firmly on the population level. For example, researchers including Drs. Cate Dewey, Martin, Wilson, and Friendship examined computerized swine records from 1987 to 1991. Recognizing that litter size “is an important production parameter in swine herds,” they examined 66 525 computerized individual sow-level records from 112 Ontario swine farms in order to analyze “the relationships between sow-level management factors and litter size” (25). In 1991 Drs. McDermott, Alves, Neil Anderson (OMAF) and Martin published a study examining the productivity of Ontario cow-calf herds, using a sample of 180 separate breeding herds. One of their aims was to provide farmers, veterinarians, and agricultural extension personnel with data with which they could “compare a specific herd’s health and productivity to productivity measures and disease rates of other herds kept under the same conditions” (26).

Through its research and extension work, such as Leslie’s internationally recognized Dairy Health Management Certificate program, the Department of Population Medicine quickly established itself as a leader in the field of population health and epidemiology. The creation of the Department of Population Medicine allowed OVC to effectively respond to the needs of the intensive livestock agriculture economy and train veterinarians to provide services that would be of maximum benefit to producers. By 2012, OVC faculty and students were conducting over 800 farm visits for health management and teaching purposes per year, impacting 1.3 million livestock animals and were providing continuous health management services to more than 70 Ontario farms, accounting for over 55 000 animals. A 2014 study of the economic impact of OVC concluded that the College, “as one of the largest and most well respected programs of its kind in the world, is an essential link in the development and maintenance of health management standards and protocols in an ever-evolving landscape” (27). As the Dean’s Council concluded in 1989, “the creation of [the] new department of Population Medicine was a critically important step that has brought the Institution to the cutting edge in the population-based veterinary health disciplines” (28). CVJ