That veterinarians are growing fewer in number across many rural areas hardly comes as news to ranchers living in more remote areas of Texas.

The trends have been years in the making.

More young veterinarians finish school owing someone something — typically in excess of $140,000 —for student loans.

To remedy, many graduates turn to urban practices, where they can keep regular office hours and often find far more lucrative options working with cats and dogs than they ever could doctoring cows and horses out in the country.

It has left gaping holes in more than 150 locations across the nation, places the U.S. Agriculture Department identifies as “critical shortage regions” for food animal veterinarians.

Homeland Security

But another critical component to healthy farm animals also is in short supply. So much so, in fact, it caught the attention of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Paraprofessionals in the field — those often tasked with hands-on animal care — are growing as rare as their veterinarian counterparts.

In response, Homeland Security’s National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense earlier this month launched a new educational program designed to prepare high school students for careers in veterinary medicine.

The program is called the National One Health Career-Oriented Youth Educational Program. It was developed by Texas AgriLife Extension Service’s Dr. Floron “Buddy” Faries.

It combines components of human, animal and environmental health sciences to prepare students for the public health and regulatory aspects of zoonotic and exotic disease control.

Working with 4-H groups, Cooperative Extension, community economic development groups and high school agriculture courses, the program also helps link students with employers to increase their probability of getting related jobs after graduation.

The curriculum consists of 75 core lessons on basic veterinary science and career education in three tracks, each with 25 lessons:

*   Clinical sciences;

*   One Health science and technology; and,

*   Laboratory research-diagnostic science and technology.

The curriculum will be published as a handbook and as a web-based course, with interactive features to establish a national curriculum in workforce development of youth.

It will be called “Veterinary Science: Preparatory Training for Veterinary Assistants.” The planned release is set for the fall.

For job training, students serve as apprentices in their chosen fields. They will receive 120 hours of on-the-job training before achieving certification.

FAZD’s announcement of the paraprofessional training program followed a call in April for applications by the Agriculture Department for veterinary students wanting to participate in the Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program.

The program directly addresses veterinary shortages in rural America by repaying student loans of qualified veterinarians in return for their services in areas facing shortages.

In return for a three-year service commitment, the program can repay up to $25,000 of student loan debt per year.

The deadline to apply for the loan repayment program is June 30.

Offers of acceptance will be made by Sept. 30.

“We need more veterinarians in these areas to help our food animal producers,” said USDA Undersecretary Dr. Mike Strain, head of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

“Veterinary care is essential for the national food safety and food security infrastructures, as well as the health and well-being of animals and humans,” he said.

Both programs are linked to the international One Health Initiative to better integrate human and veterinary medicine.

About 60 percent of all human pathogens are transmissible between human and animals, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Website addresses

Additional information on the paraprofessional training program will be published on the FAZD website when it becomes available at www.fazd.tamu.edu.

Loan repayment program applications and information is available at www.nifa.usda.gov.

Bobby Horecka lives in China Spring with his wife and three children. He writes for the Texas Farm Bureau’s print publications, online news service and video projects.