Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinarett welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat, the UK's number one veterinary podcast, and I'm delighted today to have Hannah Davis on the call with me. Hannah is the technical content lead at Vet Sustain, as well as being a lecturer at at Surrey University, which is obviously a university that is really . Trying to put curriculum and sustainability together, which is obviously a challenge in our, our busy sort of curriculum is to fit other things in, isn't it, Hannah, so thank you for the work that you're doing.
In those two very important organisations. No problem. I suppose I should ask first of all, for people who don't know you as well, you know, what's the background?
Obviously you are a veterinary surgeon. Tell us a little bit about the journey from, you know, thinking you wanted to be a vet to, to becoming one and what you've done since then. Great.
Yes. So, I've always wanted to be a vet, but, I struggled a bit at school, academically and was kind of put off the idea by my teachers and gave up on the idea really, and I, and I decided to go to university and do a degree in geography. .
But whilst I was at university doing that degree in geography, I had a really great tutor who took time to speak to me about what I might want to do in the future and, and I sort of said to them, oh, you know, I've always really wanted to be a vet, but kind of given up on that idea. And, and they were really helpful and really keen to encourage me to have another go and to try and do it as a postgraduate degree. So, I was then able to work hard in my, in my degree and and get a good enough, grade in order to be able to apply to vet school.
And, and then they wrote me a really nice reference, which I think was really helpful. And I got into Glasgow vet school. Which was a joyful moment in my life.
And I loved going up to Glasgow, had a fantastic time up there. And I think across the course of the five years I really started to gain a great interest in farming and the importance of farming for, sustainable food production and for, livelihoods, and that's sort of where my interest in sustainability first started, . I went into mixed practise when I first graduated and, and then I realised that my real love was for large animal and and farming in particular.
So I moved more into that kind of area of work and, and in order to develop my interest in one health and sustainability, I started a master's in International animal health, which I completed whilst I was working in practise, . It worked quite well because I was on a really busy rota and and actually had quite a lot of time on the weekends where I was on call but was kind of just waiting around for things to happen. And so that was a great opportunity for me to do some study for my master's whilst I was waiting.
And then on the back of that, I was able to get a job with Sparner, the working animal charity, and I worked as a veterinary programme advisor for them, where I was able to kind of bring that international animal health work into a little bit more focus for me, and I travelled out to Africa and Asia and. After a lot of their veterinary projects, and I was able to really see the importance of animals and people's livelihoods and for their health and wellbeing. That was really kind of, I think that was quite a pivotal moment in my sustainability journey and seeing the importance that animals and vets can have in in in that.
And then I got to the point where I didn't want to be travelling as much and an opportunity came up at Surrey, and I've been doing quite a lot of teaching at Sparner. So it seemed like a sensible option for me to, to move to Surrey and to focus on teaching. And I've been at Surrey since then.
I work as a lecturer in veterinary clinical practise and I look after the final year students, when they're out on rotations in farm practises and also in some of the equine practises. And I compliment that work with a new role for vets to staying one day a week, as their technical content lead, and, and that's been a really interesting combination, of those, those two roles. So it's a busy time, but it's good.
I think it's now called being plural, isn't it's having several roles, as well as everything else that you do. And I think it's, it's really important because the, the large animal aspect is probably where we can make the most difference as a vet for sustainability and the planets. But also recognising as you did with the work with with Sparner that .
Animals are really important in in developing countries. I was speaking to one of the Ethiopian vets at vetted recently that we were both at. And you know, the massive effect that the the climate crisis is having there were, you know, millions, I think they said over a million livestock had died through drought.
This has a hugely profound effect on just general one health, doesn't it, so. That's why I'm always a little bit awkward about if somebody says, well, you know, veganism don't have any animals, there is, it's so much part of our society that we have to have. There's probably a middle ground somewhere, isn't there?
Yeah, I think it's a, it's a really, it's a really difficult one. And there's a lot of emotion, you know, associated as well. I think that we can have a really profound impact as veterinary professionals in in sustainable and regenerative farming practises where we can really champion.
Animal health and animal welfare in particular, and, and I think having seen in resource poor countries the importance of animals for production and for livelihoods, I can really see that they have a vital role and and I think there's a lot we can do as professionals to improve health and welfare of those animals in those circumstance. And support the big systems that these animals feed into, in a really positive way. So, but it's certainly a tricky topic to navigate sometimes and there's a lot of confusing information, out there as well, which doesn't always help because it can muddy the waters a bit.
I think if we can move on to your role in that sustained, obviously been going now several years and that sustain doing a really great job. I know the carbon calculators just come out as well, which is really helpful because of course, Before we almost do anything, from a science based sense, we have to measure our outputs, don't we be in, you know, plastics or whatever, but certainly carbon is, is a really important part of that. How, how's the carbon calculator going on?
Is it getting used by practicers to start on that first step of the journey of, of recognising how they can reduce and, and so on. Yeah, so I think Vet Sustain it was set up 4 years ago and and the the main goal for Vet Sustain is to enable and inspire veterinary professionals in their sustainability journey. And we've got these really great resources now, we've got the carbon calculator tool which can be used to calculate your carbon footprint and it's a veterinary specific carbon calculator.
So it's, and it's quite easy to use, so I've used it on a couple of practises that we work with, at Surrey, as part of a student project, and it gives a really clear, guidance of, of where your main carbon is coming from so that you can look at how you can reduce it, going forwards year on year. In line with that, we've got the carbon literacy course which allows you to understand the importance of greenhouse gases and carbon and what we can do to mitigate those things, which we run regularly, which helps to kind of build people's understanding. And we've also got the Greener veterinary practise checklist and and series that will be coming out soon to support practises in helping them to reduce their carbon.
So those tools together are, I think, really helpful, to give a very holistic understanding of, of carbon and what we can do about it. We've had variable uptake of of the carbon calculator so far. We've had quite a few practises that are starting to think about using it now.
And what we'd like to do going forward is benchmark that tool so that practises can think about where they should be in relation. To other practises. So that will be the next stage.
And once we get more people using it, we should hopefully be able to make those benchmarks so that practises have got a greater understanding of where they should sit. You know, are they, are they high? Are they low are they middle ground?
How can they start to make some changes? So yeah, it's a bit of a work in progress, but it's it's a fantastic tool to be able to provide to veterinary professionals. I was doing another podcast with climate activists and they were talking about the word carbon footprint and where it had come from, and I was quite surprised.
It was actually invented by one of the oil companies to actually try and place the responsibility for carbon with the individual rather than with the company, which I thought was was quite fascinating. It was the first time I'd heard that. That's a really good way of looking at it.
Yeah, I mean in the end we are all responsible, but obviously if you're a big oil company, you've got probably a bigger responsibility than you or I have got. Yeah, and I think, you know, it's important that we all think about our carbon footprint as, as you say, you know, it's great that we've got this tool for calculating the practise carbon footprint, but there are individual carbon footprint tools that you can use on an individual basis to think about what's your own carbon footprint in your work and home and personal life. And that's quite a nice thing as well, so that everyone can play their part here.
Yeah. It's really nice, this year I've, I've had solar panels for, you know, over a decade. But I added a battery this year and it's so interesting to see how when you've got the battery and the smart metre, you can actually see, oh, the sun is shining.
It's not costing, you know, my, my house is running zero electricity from the grid. I can turn on my dishwasher or I can, you know, wash some clothes at this point. And you can really manage how you use your electricity and therefore save it and of course we've got this big sort of commitment in this decisive decade that we've probably got to halve our carbon usage in the next 7 to 10 years.
And as you say, that's an individual target, but it's also a business target and then of course it's also a, a government target as well. How how, how do you find, Bringing some of those topics now, which, you know, I was at at school 30 odd years ago and of course nobody talked about any of that. How is, how are you in sorry managing to bring that into the curriculum and there's a second question.
Do you see interest from the students, and if so, you know, what sort of percentage is there a percentage who still don't seem to be that bothered about it, and some that are obviously really keen, it's obviously some sort of bell-shaped curve. What, what does that look like in your, in your opinion? so if I go to your second question first, we've, we've recently done some quite basic research at Surrey, but, you know, useful research nonetheless, where we've surveyed the student body to ask them about their attitudes towards sustainability.
And generally we've responses have been between 80 and 90% of students are, you know, highly concerned about the future of of the climate, the future of the planet in relation to biodiversity, and their future, you know, and I think. That has been a great driver for us to then bring sustainability into the curriculum because the student voice is really powerful. And if the students have of driving something forward, then often it drives universities to act, which is, which is really great.
So there's certainly appetite within the student population to understand better about climate change and and sustainability issues. And there's a general feeling when we did the survey, which was a few years ago, there was a general feeling that it wasn't included enough within the curriculum and that it should be included better within the curriculum. So as a result, at Surrey, we've, we've recently done a curriculum review because we've now been running our curriculum for 7 years and we do a review after every 7 years.
And as part of that we've highlighted what teaching is well aligned to sustainability and climate change and then where are the gaps. And interestingly, the veterinary course is quite well aligned to sustainability. If you look at the 17 sustainable development goals, we are targeting a lot of those within our teaching already.
What we're finding is that we're not always signposting it all that well, so we're not necessarily, linking the teaching with the sustainable development goals and making the students have that awareness of what the goals are, and why they relate to the teaching. . But what we want to try and do at Surrey is build more of a sustainable culture rather than have a lecture on sustainability.
So we have got a new module that's coming into our 4th year, which will focus on one health and sustainability, and that will be linked. We, we have a spiral curriculum at Surrey, which means that we revisit points throughout the years, to allow students to make sort of downward links with previous years teaching. And so the plan is for this new module to complement some of the teaching that's gonna be in the lower years and allow students to consolidate their learning around one health and sustainability.
We're also trying to grow our sustainability working group at the vet school, which is working to raise awareness of things like waste management, responsible use of medicines, discussion topics around health and wellbeing, which feeds into sustainability really nicely, and working also to promote biodiversity on campus, so our students have created a wellbeing garden. In the grounds of the vet school, which is really lovely and they grow some vegetables and they've got, you know, they're hoping to promote biodiversity in that little space that they've got, devoted to the well-being garden, which is really nice. No, that's really interesting and you know, you were talking there about obviously creating a culture rather than specific topics.
Is it more that sustainability, you know, in my view, when I talk about it, I talk about, as a vet I used to think of everything as a triangle because there was myself, there was the animal and there was the owner and the more that we worked together, the more success we have and you wanted to make sure you were thinking about the client. And the pet or the animal, you know, a farm animal or whatever, . And then I've sort of developed that into thinking more like a square because then environment becomes a part of that.
And one of the ones I always used to do, and I probably didn't think of it as a sustainability thing, although it was, as a dermatologist and I had a dog with dermadiosis, the the licenced product at the time was a, was an amateurs product made by one of the companies. And I knew that this was just a really nasty chemical one for the people who were applying it, so the clients, or if you were doing it in-house with the nurses. So I suppose bent the rules, I said well I don't want to use the, the .
The product that is the licenced product, which therefore by the cascade I should use, but I was using drugs like ivermectin and of course we know ivermectin potentially has a problem. In the environment if it's excreted, but I felt that that was a lower risk than than amateurs being poured down the grid at the end, you know, which goes into the watercourse. So is that possibly a way of, of.
Teaching sustainability through the curriculum of actually weaving it into pretty much all the topics, if you're talking about orthopaedics, you know, what are the implants made of, what sort of implants should you be looking at, what are, you know, more sustainably produced steel than maybe some of the others, and these are then the questions I suppose that we should be asking. To the to the companies that are making implants and things, isn't it? Is that maybe the way that you're moving towards?
Yeah, absolutely, because I think if we can have our academic team that are writing the lecture content for our students, if we can have them well versed in the in the principles of sustainability. And they can bring education for sustainable development into their lectures. They don't have to rewrite their lectures.
They can just simply signpost to say, when you're creating a a anti-parasiticide plan for whichever animal species we're talking about, have you considered the impact of those drugs on the environment? Have you considered how you will speak to the owner? About disposal and storage and management of those medicines, you know, have you considered, the impact of those medicines in a more holistic way rather than just we think they've got a parasite problem and we need to treat it, and that's what we're gonna do.
So what we really want to try and focus on over the next few years at Surrey is getting our academic team a little bit more aware of the principles of sustaining. So that when they're writing their lectures, they can signpost these things, because a lot of it is what they're teaching already, but they're not necessarily making the link and saying, let's think about how these things might have a wider impact and always bringing in that human animal environmental element, you know, to to be to be more holistic about it, I think. So yeah, I totally agree with what you're saying.
I think when I came down and I did some lectures in dermatology, I was really impressed with the way that Surrey is doing things differently, innovative. Obviously you were at the Veterinary Green discussion forum along with UCLA, you know, two of the newer vet schools. Do you think it's, it's more difficult potentially for the older vet schools to think in a more.
Innovative way because you know some of them have been around for 100 years plus and it's worked all the time, it's very difficult isn't it, for, For older companies to to innovate and disrupt themselves, because if it's been working that one way, then they're always going to do it, but perhaps from an educational sense, not just with sustainability, we do need to look at different ways of working because even just talking about sustainability of the profession with people leaving. We clearly haven't kind of got that all sorted yet, have we? I know that's a big topic, but it innovation is so important as part of any education change is happening even more quickly.
Perhaps young, a younger vet school like yourself is just more, it's more in its DNA to move quickly. Yeah, I think, I mean, I'm part of the vet sustained curriculum working group, which involves representatives from all the main vet schools in the UK, and I have to say that all of the people in that group are incredibly passionate about championing sustainability in their institutions. .
I think certainly at a new vet school like Surrey, you do have a little bit more free reign because your curriculum is new, it's under new development and so there's that opportunity to bring in these new concepts a little bit more easily than once you've established your curriculum, when you're trying to fit it in. And the curriculum is so busy, there's so much stuff that needs to be included. And I think that's why if you can bring in the principles of education for sustainable development, it's better than trying to say, let's fit in some lectures on sustainability, because you're then gonna target that content throughout the curriculum in a more simplistic way.
So yeah, I, I think it's a, it's certainly, there's certainly a lot of appetite within the institutions, and we were so delighted to come to the Green that discussion forum and also to have the opportunity to bring student representatives. So we brought two students, one from our final year and one that's just about to go into 4th year. And they brought such an interesting perspective, to the discussions, and they also learned an awful lot about some of the issues that are going on within the profession, so that was a really like unique opportunity to be given.
To take students into that environment and something that we, we were very grateful for. So hopefully in future years, we'll have more student representatives from different institutions and that can drum up a little bit more discussion, in that sense. Cos I think you said it earlier on, you know, it's the student body is very powerful now in universities and.
We really should listen because of course they, they are the future, you know, the climate crisis, we hopefully can mitigate, but they are going to bear more of the brunt of it and so therefore we have to listen to some of their ideas as well. Yeah, absolutely, and if we can empower them to be thinking about these things at university, then hopefully they will continue to think about them when they're in the profession and in their personal lives as well. And that's a a win-win, I think.
Thank you so much, Hannah. It's been great speaking to you. Thank you for all the great work you're doing at Vetstay, which I think is an amazing, organisation, but also in, in Surrey in helping to really form the curriculum and and place sustainability throughout rather than as a one-off topic that people go to for one or two lectures and they can forget about.
So thank you so much for all the. The hard work you're doing, it, it always, inspires me to speak to people like you in, in that are doing so much in sustainability, to encourage me to carry on on on my own personal and company journey in sustainability as well, so thank you so much. Well, thank you very much for inviting me and it's been really nice to chat with you today.
Thanks Hannah. Thanks everyone for listening. I hope to see you on a podcast very soon.
This is Anthony Chadwick from the webinar vet, and this has been Bet Chat. Take care.
