Hello, it's Anthony Chadwick from the webinar Vett welcoming you to another episode of Vet Chat, the UK's number one veterinary podcast channel. I'm so privileged to be able to run this channel and meet so many people who inspire me. We often, as you know on the channel, talk about, important issues around sustainability and, I'm really fortunate today to have Jeannette Castle on the line.
Jeannette, good morning, good evening, Queen Morga, Avon, whichever language we're listening in, I'm presuming most people will be doing English, and in fact the Dutch probably don't want to hear me speaking Dutch, but of course, Jeannette, an Aussie. But, but by birth, born in, born in the Netherlands. That's right.
It's really good to be here. Thanks for having me. Thanks Jeannette.
And Jeannette is a small animal practitioner just outside of Brisbane. But has been incredibly passionate for a long time about the environment and is the chair of VFCA which is the veterinarians for Climate Action. And Jeanette, I'd just like you to perhaps fill us in on, on some of the .
Background of how you've sort of become a vet and also taking this particular area of sustainability of the climate crisis so seriously and perhaps just before we start, love the background is probably our coolest background that we've had, so . Very first nation Aboriginal Australian I would guess. That's right, yes, it's from Mornington Island up in the north.
And we used to live there for a while when I was a child, so it's a very special painting for me. Yeah, it's beautiful. Anyway, tell us a little bit about the background, Jeannette, how you've come to be chair of the VFCA.
Sure, well. I grew up in a family that loved camping. My parents came from Europe and they were so happy to be around mountains and natural places with so many wild birds, and so we used to go camping as a family, sometimes for 2 or 3 weeks at a time.
With my 5 brothers and sisters, and we live very simply, and I just loved, seeing the birds and, watching them and floating around in the creek and looking at dragonflies, and, it really instilled a very deep love of nature for me. And of course I loved animals and, and being a veterinarian suited me very well. I had a family, I have 4 children.
And when those children were young, I wanted to be home with them and established a small practise, at home actually. And then gradually, that sort of grew and we now have the greater Springfield veterinary group, just outside of Brisbane, which we have 50 staff now, and, they actually work very hard to free me up to devote myself, myself to veterinarians for climate action. So it might surprise you to hear that, I haven't been particularly active in this space, until the last 4 to 5 years.
I, have always loved the environment, but I didn't really understand what was going on, because like very many of us, I was busy, you know, raising my family, looking after animals, doing surgery, doing calls at night, and thinking that I might end up being a, close to full-time advocate for climate action was as far from my mind as probably having a practise with 50 staff was. So, I, I did start to become concerned 5 or 6 years ago about, mining of coal, and, joined some protests, and, and I just realised I was actually a lousy protester. I, I'm not very good at, At at at protesting, but I am probably OK at inspiring and influencing people.
So I met with, who was the chair of Farmers for Climate Action. I was introduced, and I said, well, maybe I can give you a bit of a hand, you know, with your climate work with farmers thinking maybe that was something I could do. And they said to me, Well, what about, you start veterinarians for climate action and then the veterinarians and the farmers can work together.
So Farmers for Climate Action Australia is now the 4th most influential environmental charity in Australia, and it does a lot of incredible work to bring the agriculture sector, you know, to reducing its emissions and, to advocate for change, which is great. So then I had this idea of perhaps starting vets for climate action. Put out a Facebook post, a number of people got back, we held a brainstorming session here at home for a day, with a number of people to try and figure out what it was that we could do.
And from there we've established quite a strong strategic plan. Which I read Jeanette and is very impressive, I suppose. I, I, I know you've been in contact with Vet Sustained, that there's obviously groups all over the world coming together and it's the power of small groups can actually make big change as well, can't they?
Absolutely. I mean, in Australia, I, I know that all around the world we're experiencing difficulties as a result of climate change, but in Australia we are experiencing a number of areas of great concern. You might remember in 2019 20, the horrific bushfires that spread across Australia, millions and millions of hectares of land were burnt.
And 3 billion animals are either were killed, burnt alive, that means, or displaced in those fires, and when they're displaced, I mean, displaced animals often don't come back. So, you know, the impact of that, the distress to veterinarians, I mean, I've been a clinical veterinarian for 31 years, and, I would have a little week with every client that lost one pet, you know, with them. I would feel sad with them.
So the idea that 3 billion animals perished in a space of a few months in just one country around the world was extremely distressing for veterinarians, and we'd already started Vets for Climate Action by then, but it was mobilising for us as well. As well as that event, we, we'd had a long drought in the north of Australia. Very long drought.
And that's an area, you know, it's a tropical area with seasonal rains. And, there's cattle, up there in the north, in the far north. And, so the, the livestock were weakened by, the drought.
And then there was this extreme rainfall event, causing extreme flooding. And the animals that didn't drown died of cold exposure. And 600,000 head of cattle perished in that event.
So the animal welfare implications of that is horrendous. So, you know, even from a, from an economic perspective, 600,000 head of cattle is, is phenomenal. We also you know, veterinarians are often, we often think about, you know, small animal or clinical practise, but we're very involved with biosecurity as well, and, diseases in Australia such as Japanese encephalitis that were only ever seen in the Torres Strait, recently was found in South Australia, in the very south, causing abortions and stillbirths in pig herds there and really impacting pig herds in the south of Australia.
We also have concerns about vector spread with cyclonic weather, potentially bringing lumpy skin disease into Australia, which is a huge animal welfare issue and an economic issue. And Japanese encephalitis is a one health issue. So, you know, all of these areas, extinctions, one health, biosecurity, animal welfare, animal production, you know, fertility.
And the economy are all in the wheelhouse of veterinarians around Australia. So those are the impacts that we've been feeling. I remember Jeanette when I was .
Thinking about becoming a vet and and training to be a vet and people would say, oh, you know, you care about animals more than people, but of course, even at that stage 40 years ago, I realised that everything is connected, and if we are to be stewards of creation and to look after the animals, if we don't look after them, then there will be an effect on us down the road and obviously we see this with . Some of the events now, obviously animals are suffering, but people are suffering and the environment is suffering, and even as you said with the biodiversity, if you've got 3 billion animals dying in a fire. That that will probably lead to some local extinctions.
I mean, your probably your most enigmatic species, or one of them would be the koala bear, and I know how much they, they suffered because they, they moved slowly and and were burnt in the fires and at our veterinary green discussion forum recently, we were hearing about Siva who are actually providing chlamydia vaccines for koalas because chlamydia is becoming more prevalent again because of the. Increase temperatures, so all of these things are, as you say, connected and, and if we want to bundle them into one word, we'd probably say one health, wouldn't we? Yes, that's right.
That's right. And Australia did have the first mammalian in extinction as well, as a result of the bushfires. I mean, I, I think what really got me going was when I realised that 70% of the world's wildlife has disappeared since I was a 5 year old girl.
So when I was a 5 year old girl swimming around in that creek with my family enjoying the birds, 7 out of 10. Animals around the world, wildlife around the world are no longer with us, and this earth is millions of years old. So, you know, we need to make changes and we need to make them quickly, which is why we've established veterinarians for climate action.
Well, Kate Brant talked about this year, who she's the CSO of Google, and she talked about this being a decisive decade and you know, I think you're right, we, we need to start turning the ship around and we need to start doing it pretty quickly, don't we? Interesting you were talking about the birds, cos I lived very much in urban Liverpool in the centre of Liverpool and. When I was a little boy, we would walk up the street and we had beautiful Dutch elm trees, elm trees in the in the road and of course Dutch elm disease came across and killed a lot of the trees.
And at that stage we would see sparrows fighting on the pavement, you know, they'd argue they're a little argumentative birds. And I used to be woken up by the sound of sparrows singing and then I, you know, I, I go back to my road now where I was brought up and there are no sparrows, and in fact in my lifetime in the UK we reckon we've lost 50 million sparrows. And as a little bit of hope, I, I now live a little bit further out by the beach, and never seen sparrows in the garden until the last 12 months, 18 months, and that's taken, Probably 5 to 10 years of me encouraging bird life back into my quite small garden, but the beauty is that if we give nature a chance it can actually regenerate very quickly, can't it?
That's right, absolutely. Obviously it's really interesting, you know, you said in 2019, the terrible fires, and of course climate change has rather unfairly affected the global south more than the global North, although. Most of the carbon that's emitted comes from.
Europe and America, which is in the north, . But we're now seeing that also in Europe, we've had the terrible bushfires in in Europe in places like Greece. And I was at a conference, an education conference talking about the fires in Canada.
They've had their worst ever fire season this year, so the North is starting to see what the south saw 1020 years ago is starting to come to the north now, they. Stat I saw 160 billion tonnes of carbon emitted into the atmosphere, as the trees in in Canada have burned, so it is a it is a really difficult situation, but . Obviously, also as a man of hope, and I know you're a woman of hope as well, we, we have to move forward and, and really impressed with all the work that VFCA is doing.
But perhaps tell me, tell me a little bit about the pillars, about some of the successes that you've had in encouraging vets and perhaps some of the bigger businesses, some of the pharmaceutical businesses and the the feed businesses to just. Think a bit differently because we're a huge client for the big pharmaceutical firms as well and we have, we have a power that perhaps collectively or as individuals we don't recognise. That's right.
I might explain to you our strategic plan, so we have a very clear strategy, and if you were to look on the vets for Climate Action, strategic plan on, on the internet, you can read it for yourself. But we have three pillars that we're focusing on. The first is education, so we're shifting the culture of our veterinary profession in Australia initially to be thinking about sustainability and climate across the veterinary curriculum.
Across veterinary conferences, we're delivering master classes, we're involved in courses. One of the really key educational components is our climate care programme, which is a 6 module programme to reach sustainability and ultimately, net zero for the veterinary profession. So each practise has a climate champion.
And deliver across 6 different areas including water use, waste, energy procurement, and chemical use. So, I mean, that has been launched this year, and we're really looking forward to the uptake of that growing over time. So that it becomes normal, just like we have mental health plans in the workplace now.
You know, 15 years ago we were starting to talk about mental health and taking care of our people in a better way, and now this is the new conversation that we need to have to round everything out. So, the climate care programme is a big part of, of Vets for Climate Action's work. And we also have an interest in focusing the climate care programme in areas where there's less understanding of climate change.
So, you know, it's easy to confuse. Climate change and sustainability. Climate change is because there's a warm blanket being created around the earth because of, you know, the, the release of fossil fuels, the release of carbon from fossil fuels, and sustainability.
It's like we're all on a spaceship, there's only so many resources to go around, and we need to use them wisely. So they're two sort of separate issues that dovetailing together. But where we're at with climate change at the moment, if you can imagine the ice ages, they occurred, you know, over a very long period.
And in the ice ages we had about 5 degrees of cooling. So that meant that, you know, you could walk between Australia and Papua New Guinea across ice, because there was huge changes, geological changes as climactic changes as a result of the ice age, in the last short period since our use of fossil fuels, we're already in reverse about, You know, just, just under, 1/3 of the way to an ice age, at least 25% of the way to an ice age in reverse. And that's very concerning that that's happened so incredibly quickly.
So, that's why we need to all get busy. You know, there are hundreds of thousands of people around the world that are focusing on this work. So, that's very important.
So the first strategic pillar is education. The second is collaboration, so we would love to collaborate internationally. We're collaborating with our veterinary associations, our veterinary business associations, our nursing associations with the New Zealand veterinarians.
We'd like to collaborate with zoos and the RSPCA moving forwards, so that we can share this message publicly of impacts on our animals and what needs to be done. And the 3rd, 3rd pillar of our strategic plan is for us to act as trusted advisors. So we work very closely with a group of 34 retired chief veterinary officers and senior government officers, veterinary officers, and they do a lot of writing and research for us.
We have a document called Climate Facts for Veterinarians. They also write letters that we then send to the Prime Minister. So we send a letter to the Prime Minister today.
And to a number of other ministers, state and federal, regarding proposed fracking of the Beetaloo Basin in the Northern Territory. And next week, a large group of veterinarians and doctors, a very large group, will be going to Canberra, visiting Parliament House and talking to parliamentarians about the Beetaloo Basin. The direct impacts on human and animal health and the indirect impacts of feeding climate change through opening these sorts of operations.
And you know, we, as a, as humanity need to stop, as soon as we can, these sorts of things. So, you know, advocacy together with people who have a powerful voices, you know, is a really, Really useful thing. I mean, in Australia, we used to go to the supermarket and bring all our groceries home in plastic bags, and everybody just did that.
And then probably not that big a number advocated to say we can't do that anymore. We need to be recycling plastic bags. And now you wouldn't think to go to the supermarket without your plastic bags.
So, you know, advocacy and education is so important with COVID, you know, the Prime Minister would stand there with the graph and say we need to, you know, Limit this growth. We need to make sure it's not exponential. And the Prime Minister explained very carefully, together with the Chief Medical officers, what the situation was.
And the people understood, and they acted, and that saved so many lives. So, I guess education and advocacy and collaboration are really, really important parts of what we do. We're very honoured to have on our board, Professor Mark Howden.
Who's a vice chair of the IPCC and the director of the Climate Institute of Australia. So we have some people, it's very humbling to me, who believe that what we are doing is worthwhile, and people who have a lot of other things that they could do with their time, that, that spend time with us and, as a profession. And, that's very humbling for me and also very encouraging.
Because I'm sure the listeners, I'm sure you're just like me, actually, I'm not qualified to do this. I'm not qualified to chair a board, I'm not qualified to, be an advocate or to speak to politicians. I'm a veterinarian by qualification with some leadership skill and, you know, but we have to get out of our comfort zone and have a crack, don't we?
You know, and, and, you know, help each other on this journey. And it is a journey, you know, our practise will, I hope soon be the second carbon neutral registered practise in Australia. We can all get to carbon neutral and then ultimately, you know, the hope would be that we won't need to buy carbon credits.
But, but this is, this is a journey. I'm on the journey, you know, I'm not there yet. We're figuring it out and we're doing that together, and I think that's incredibly important.
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Pop and say hello to a community of over 2000 veterinary professionals by searching. The webinar that community on Facebook. Jeanette, I think it's really important for our listeners to realise that they have a powerful voice in that.
As a veterinary practise, we will often be buying pharmaceuticals, we'll be buying disposables that perhaps er how they're made, also food as well. I think we do have a power to talk to some of the bigger companies and say we want you to move quicker. I think there's some companies that are doing a lot, some maybe not so much.
This is where I think in the end we can encourage the ones who are doing more by buying more from them and then encouraging the other ones to do more because we're stopping buying from them. What, what, what are your thoughts on procurement? Yeah, I completely agree.
So one of the modules, in, in our climate care programme is a procurement module. And, that hasn't been released yet. That's one of our later modules.
But I, I'm just imagining that, across the profession that we could all all be asking the same questions of our, of our industry, companies, you know, asking, well, what's your net zero target? What are you doing towards your net zero target? What's your biodiversity impacts?
What are you doing about that? You know, where are you now? We're all on a journey, but where are you and where do you intend to be soon?
And I feel that if everybody, you know, in a structured way, is asking those same sorts of questions over time, internationally, that has a very big impact. So my practise turns over about $6 million and in that practise, 20% is cost of goods. So that's what we spend.
So for every dollar that we make, we spend about $20 on drug bills and, you know, buying stuff. So, you know, in my practise, that's $1.2 million in buying power.
I think that's quite substantial for one, you know, one small group. So, you know, I've already made choices in terms of the products that I purchase based on sympathy for veterinarians for climate action, interest in veterinarians for climate action. And more importantly, where the companies have targets in place.
So that's the sort of way that, you know, we can have an impact on our industry by thinking carefully around what we buy, just as, as we wouldn't purchase from companies that use slave labour, you know, we wouldn't do that. We also shouldn't be buying from companies that have no concern for the environment. So we are all on this journey together, so there's a bit of carrot and a bit of stick.
But, hopefully more carrot, but I do think that we have a great deal more power than what we think we do. Ultimately, I'm a very small person with a big idea, and I've found that, you know, we all have a lot more power than we think we do in ourselves to make a change. And I think it's interesting, within the big companies, they're often made, well they are all made up of individual people who, Some of whom will be very passionate about the environment, some of whom aren't, but actually, even, you know, a lot of the companies are trying to move.
To a more, sustainable and a more environmentally friendly space. So if we're encouraging them. If we need to cajole a bit, then we can, but encouragement always works best, doesn't it?
And sharing, I mean, the Australian Veterinary Association now has a very, very strong and comprehensive policy on animal health, welfare, production and climate change. It's a fantastic policy, you know, and once you have policies in place, then you're obliged to act on them, so. You know, even at that level it's important to get, to get those things right, because that's sort of your guiding document then, for any organisation or company.
We're also very fortunate in in the UK in that our soon to be BVA president is a big advocate of the environment and also the. Our CBS President Sue Patterson is also very interested in the environment. They were both at the Green discussion forum, so.
I think And There are reasons for Hon't there, and I know we all use different analogies. I often talk about the Titanic took a long time to turn and that was part of its problem, but we need to turn the ship much more quickly. I know I, I use .
I use ships as an analogy. I believe you use trains as an analogy for how we should be moving quickly in climate change perhaps to finish explain about, the train analogy. Yeah, it's quite a nice analogy, that was given to me recently.
So we can imagine that there's this train coming our way and it's rattling along very, very, very fast. And, we can choose to say there's no train coming, stand on the track and say, no, no trains coming. There's no train coming.
It's not gonna come. But the train's gonna get you. Or you can turn your back on the, so that's turning your back on the train, I guess.
Or you can look at the train and you can be so paralysed by this train coming your way that you go, oh, there's nothing I can do. My feet are rooted here and there's, I'm stuck. You could also perhaps try and get into the driver's seat of the train and slow that train right down, put the brakes on the train.
That's a very important one. If you're standing on the train track, you've got to think about what side of the train track are you gonna hop off. Are you gonna hop off on the side where, the adaptation to what's inevitable is occurring, or are you gonna hop on the side where there's no adaptation and the situation is worse again?
So, I guess the message is we need to get on the, on the driver's seat of that train and slow it down. And if we're standing in front of the train, we need to face towards it. We need not to be paralysed by it, and we need to climb off the tracks in a way that facilitates good adaptation to climate change.
And I think that that's a, that was a, a message that I found helpful. And I see veterinarians for climate action as a. You know, creating a fence at the top of the cliff rather than being the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
So, you know, we, as veterinarians really want to look after things, but we've really got to get to the top of the cliff and put some guard rails up, and that's reducing emissions globally. That's our job. Together with the whole planet, really, all of humanity needs to drop emissions.
This decade, this is the critical decade. We all just need to get started, we need to get on that journey. And I'd encourage you to get on the journey with us, to join Vets for Climate Action, just, just join and receive our newsletters.
That, that would be very encouraging to us. And, and my message is always don't get depressed, get active. That's what we need to do.
Don't get depressed, get active and stay hopeful. Because I think we can. We, we can slow this train down.
Yes. And we all have something, yeah, we have time or we have money, or we have influence, or we have contacts, you know, we all have a way of, of contributing and, resolving this problem together. So we need to use what we have.
Absolutely, Jeannette, one of my things I'm trying to push this year is to encourage vets to put solar panels on the roof cos it's a very easy way and it's becoming more, Economically viable as well with the the increase in fuel costs that it, it, it gives us more security, but actually if we have the money to put solar panels on our roof, it has a massive impact as well. So there are definitely things that we can do and it's so important that we do take action because otherwise we are in a, on a sticky wicket to use an ashes, . Analogy, having just managed to draw with you guys after being 2-0 down, we we're very pleased in the UK at the moment.
Well done. Jeannette, thank you so much for for taking time, it's . It's a pleasure.
It's a privilege to do this podcast because I get to speak to really inspirational people like yourself, so thank you for all the fantastic work that you're doing. You're very welcome. Thanks everyone for listening and hope to hear you soon on, see you soon on another podcast.
This is Anthony Chadwick and this was V Chat. Take care.
