Thank you very much, Anthony. Good afternoon everybody. So yes, today I'm gonna talk about how are they in my life looks like and also give you a taste of the wide variety of activities that we do.
So I will start naming my responsibilities which are identifying and controlling endemic and exotic diseases, being responsible for the surveillance of new and emerging diseases, ensuring high standards of welfare are maintained, facilitating the trade of animals and products of animal origin, and also regulating the safety disposal of animal by-products to protect the public health. So now I will divide my activities in four main areas. Animal health, animal welfare, public protection, and international trade.
So as an example, for example, on Monday I can be duty vet on call. This means that I can receive any call regarding animal disease. On this particular day, I received a call from a private vet reporting brucellosis.
He went to a farm where he found 3 lambs with swollen testicles. There were no other clinical signs. The reason why the vet contacted me is because he was suspecting of a notifiable disease.
A notifiable disease is the one that legally needs to be reported to an APHA vet even when it is only suspected. And the reason is because they can be potential zoonosis such as rabies. They can cause major economic loss, such as foot and mouth, and they can also have an impact on international trade.
So you can see now a list of notifiable diseases and brucellosis is one of them. Anybody can report a notifiable disease, can be the lab, can be the police, a farmer, or a private vet like on this case. So my priorities after the vet reported the case to me were the disease control, the welfare of the animals, the biosecurity measures in place, and also the health and safety, which I have to say is always a priority.
So I knew what I have to do because we received training for that for report cases and notifiable disease. So the instructions to follow were clear. Over the phone, I couldn't rule out the disease due to the clinical sign described by the vet.
So what I did first is place restrictions on farm. And then I gathered general information of the premises, the history of the incident, and I also ask the farm some details about the kind of enterprise he has, the health history of the animals, if they were treated, the biosecurities in place, and it's very important to take note of all this. So I inspected about 50 animals and no clinical signs were observed.
Then I examined these 3 lamps and I confirmed the swelling of the testicle and also fibrotic lesions. The temperature was normal on both of them and there were no changes in the temperature taken by the vet in the previous day. So then I liaise with the veterinarian so they can notify the disease unit and because I couldn't rule out the disease, I took samples.
So the positive sample results take about 24 hours with a final positive confirmation in 2 to 5 days depending on the disease, and on this particular case, the results came back negative in about 7 days, so I lifted the restrictions. So because that day it was a report case, I finished quite late. Next day I could start later and I have to say that's one of the advantages of working as a government vet.
So. The next day I was TV vet, and I have to say because I'm based in Devon, in the high risk area, TV is a very important part of the work I do. So when anti vet and responsible for reviewing this charts.
Answering queries from farmers and facilitating the continuity of their business. So for example, completing these assessments for approval of licences to move on and off the farm, and we also do is report forms. That they are done following a breakdown of TV.
So they are really important because this allow case management and the end is collecting information and together with veterinary knowledge and risk assessment, we try to find the origin of the infection. This data will allow give information for an annual epidemiology report, so this work is very, very important. So like in CSI you need to do an investigation.
So you collect information before the visit. On that visit that I did that day, I was going to affirm that they had 250 cattle. 15 reactors were disclosed in the TB skin test and all of them presented lesions in the retropharyngeal lymph nodes at the postmortem examination.
And all of them were cuffs. So during the visit, I questioned the farmer and I found out that it was a closed herd with no contact with any other cattle and they were two active badgers that on the farm. They fed grass silage, cake in the parlour, and the most relevant thing I found out is that the cows were fed with meal replacer.
So I asked the farmer to show me the facilities on the farm and I saw that the farm was not wildlife proof. The gates had gaps and the meal replaced as you can see now in the picture is being placed in a plastic container that was not properly cleaned and disinfect after using it in the evening. So with all this info that I gather.
I concluded that the most likely origin of the infection was wildlife, so the badgers were going during the night, licking the meal replace their leftovers, and the calves got infected from it. So I advised the farmer about biosecurity and after a few but effective changes, once the breakdown concluded, then the farmer even did future breakdowns. So some of the days I can have welfare visits.
They can be triggered by complaints or referrals, and they can also be what we call cross-compliance, divided in random or target visits. So now I will focus on the welfare on farm. So I had a referral from an OB in the abattoir who and the Morten found that some cows from a farm presented poor condition, chronic lesion and lameness, and at the postmortem examination 4 animals were rejected due to generalised edoema and septic polyarthritis.
So these findings automatically triggered a welfare visit in the form of origin that I did. I did a welfare visit on that farm. So I recorded what I found and the animals that I saw present in very poor condition and this specific case was followed by another visit, referral to local authorities, implicated reductions in the single farm payment and serious cases as this one can ultimately end up in prosecution.
For this reason, it's very important that we record, record all findings and now it's very easy with new technologies on the iPhones that we use. So what I did is, I took pictures and I took videos as well, take note of all the numbers and I also inspected records for food swimming, also medicines, mortality records. So that's very important.
So the cases where we found problems in the past, they may become target visits in the future. The cross-compliance that I was referring earlier are done for the single farm payment claimants only and we give a maximum of 48 hours of notice and if we find noncompliance then ultimately they can have reductions in the payments and also finishing prosecution. And just to mention that we don't only monitor the welfare on farms but also at the markets.
And in transit So just to finish, another day I can be responsible for international trade. So usually there are export health certificates that I have to review and sign off and post import checks, and I have to say that the number of visits have increased lately in the last years since started being popular to go on holidays to certain countries like Spain and bring a rescue dog with you. So my role is to make sure that those dogs that they are coming from other countries, they are regulated and they don't bring any disease such as rabies.
So what I will do is I have to do a physical examination of the dog, read the microchip, confirm that all the vaccinations and worms are in place and that the information of the passport matches with the paperwork that we received for the import. So as you can see, and to sum up, what I do in a day is engaging with the farmer, industry groups and the public, applying expert advice to decision makers, being involved in threat surveillance and risk assessment and mitigation. Influence international policy development, responses rapidly to emergencies may also interface between the industry and the government.
So thank you very much for listening. Just to add, if you have any queries about flexibilities or our policies or what conditions of the APHA, please get in touch with us. So now I will hand over to my colleague Paloma Valero, who is a veterinary auditor working for the FSA.
Good afternoon everybody. My name is Paloma Valero, as Raquel just mentioned, and I'm a veterinary auditor at the Food Standards Agency. And in this short presentation, I'll try to get you through what what I do at the FSA and how could you become part of it.
Everything has started And let's see if we can move the, the slides. Hold on a sec with us. Everything started in the University of Valencia for me in Spain, where I'm from, and it was in the last year of my academic degree when the managing director of a company called Evelyn Jones did in a presentation in the university and conducted interviews with the intention to offer the future graduates a job opportunity.
I mentioned the name of this company because currently it's the only service delivery partner that provides the veterinary and me hygiene inspection services for the FSA in England and Wales. So except for a few vets directly employed by the FSA, all the official veterinarians working at the slaughterhouses in England and Wales are employed by Evelyn Jones. And this is important because not, not for all of the vet roles in the FSA but for the majority.
Being an official veterinarian is a requirement. So my agreement with them was for a year and I thought it was an amazing opportunity to live and experience in another country, a different culture, improve my, my English, and think what I wanted to do next. And so thought my mom, bless her.
So I packed my things. I took a plane to the UK and overtook, I overtook the, the OB course in Bristol University and I started working as an official veterinarian. And here I am 14 years later.
And in 2015, I became a veterinary auditor at the Food Standards Agency. The auditing task had been previously subcontracted to Evi and Jones and in 2014, FSA decided to recruit a dedicated team of auditors, so the number of vets in the, the FSA increased. Currently, we are 15 veterinary auditors covering England and Wales.
So, before I tell you a little bit more about my role, I thought it was important to explain a bit, a little bit of who we are and what we do in the, in the FSA. The FSA is a non-ministerial UK government department and was established in 2000 with a board of directors which is responsible for the overall strategic direction of the FSA and it's appointed to protect consumer interest in relation to food. The board meetings are open to the public and online, so you can follow any, you know, of these, of these meetings live.
FSA is accountable to parliament and in Northern Ireland and Wales, they both in administrations via the, the health ministers. So food standards, Food Standards Scotland plays a similar role in Scotland obviously, and we were very close together to ensure a consistent approach. So FSA has offices in London, Belfast, Cardiff, and New York, and no doubt EU exit will have a significant impact on the FSA and our remit in expanding and we are As, as we take on, you know, a great role in risk analysis and assurance.
This means that we are growing as an organisation and we are recruiting more staff and, and a 5th FSA building will soon open in, in Birmingham. So what we do. Overall, the FSA is responsible at the central government level for the main body of feed and food safety law in the UK with the purpose of protecting public health from risks that may arise in connection with the consumption of food and otherwise to protect the interests of consumers.
In all matters connected with food. So it doesn't really matter whether what you do in the FSA, whether you are an official veterinarian, a field veterinary coordinator, a field veterinary leader, policy advisor, risk assessor, or an auditor. Our aim is to protect public health.
And specifically, and as a, as an example, we, we will, we will be involved in events of, you know, an outbreaks, we influence emergency orders and regulations. We monitor and audit the food safety management systems of the establishments and our jurisdiction, and we will also participate in in incident management. We proposed legislation and develop policy and advise ministers, ministers on food safety and standards issues.
Probably these last two, the, the ones, the, the two jobs, which won't necessarily require you to be an official veterinarian, but it will help. Although it's not it's not a requirement. And just to quickly summarise, what is the, the Food Standards Agency strategic plan, which was established for 2015, 2020 and can be summarised in that we want to make sure that food is safe and that people are not exposed to unacceptable risk.
We want to make sure that Food is what it says it is. We are working on our gathering and use of science, evidence and information available to get better at horizontal scanning and anticipating risk. We are working hard on our educational role, changing what consumers know about the food system and empowering them to use that knowledge.
We want to influence businesses to do better for consumers, not only because it's a legal requirement. And we are trying to ensure that all of us have the right skills, knowledge, and behaviours that, and these that are supported by the right systems, tools and ways of working to make our best contributions. And now, going back to my, to my actual job, why, why veterinary auditors?
Because the legislation says so. And here you have some of, some of the examples where this is an actual legal requirement for veterinarians to carry out the audits in food establishment. It is a principle of regulation A54 of 2004 that the physical controls will verify the food business operator's compliance with EU and national regulations and that applied to approved meat establishment.
Part of that verification process is the audit of good hygiene practises, the hazard-based procedures, and the FPO's food safety management system. As auditors, we must verify the FPO's continuous compliance with their own procedures, for amongst others, all aspects of animal byproducts handling, including specific risk material control, animal identification, and animal health and welfare. So as you can see, this is a very wide range of systems and procedures that we look at during our, our visits.
In addition to the audit of hazard-based procedures, we check that the operator's procedures guaranteed to the extent possible that meat is free from pathological abnormalities or changes, faecal and all the contamination, and as I said, a specific waste material. So basically, what, this is how I will implement all these. So, on a monthly basis, I receive a list of all the establishments.
I shall visit the following month, and we are divided in three teams. I belong to the South and Southwest, West and Wales, sorry. And these are FSA approved meat premises such as red meat, farm re game slaughterhouses, poultry meat slaughterhouses, cutting plants.
We will also be wild game plants, mince meat, meat preparations, and this includes burgers, sausages, and marinated meat. Meat product plans and ready to eat establishments and also co-located college stores. I then give the operators a ring or send them an email to arrange a convenient date for my visit.
So our audits are announced. And I have some control over the dates I booked them in, giving me certain certain flexibility and allowing me to work things around events such as first dates back to school or Christmas performances and whatnot. Then.
On the day of the audit, I will knock on the door and the operative responses could be very different. I mean, from the very welcoming and open ones to the ones that don't really want to see us there. So sometimes it could be a challenging environment.
This will be followed by a visit to the processing areas and the documentary checks. The aim of the audit is to verify compliance with the legal requirements and to ensure adequate, adequate standards in relation to public health, animal health and welfare. So the length of our visits could vary from 3 to 12 hours depending on the size of the site and the activities audited.
I collect and record objective evidence of the operatives compliance with legislative requirements for food safety management systems. I discussed the non-compliances with the operatives, explaining what the legal requirements are. So here we have our educational goal, agreed completion dates for achieving compliance, and in no so compliant plans, I do escalate enforcement with formal notices and referral for investigation when corrective actions are not taken.
This occasionally and in court where we are expected to give evidence as witnesses and, and experts. During the closing meeting, I will determine the audit outcome which will establish the audit frequency at the establishment, which we could, it could be from 2 months to 3 years. Then back in the, back in the office, at home, I will write the report within 10 working days.
And an audit report contains 7 principal sections from animal health and identification, animal welfare, hygiene production, environmental hygiene. HasA animal byproducts, is a rent controls, with a maximum of 90 subsections which we need to score as compliant or non-compliant. And if not compliant, whether it is a minor, major, or a critical, depending on the risk.
So, so far, the job looks quite straightforward and easy to handle with the advantages of a lexi approach and a home-based regime. But then, a lot of our time is also utilised on telephone conversations and emails exchange with colleagues, operatives, technical managers, local authorities. Continuous learning.
We don't stop learning. There are always new procedures, new legislation, and we need to do research in new or unknown areas where sometimes industry is developing faster than legislation. Regular meetings, FSA internal, but also with the stakeholders.
We do not only work or do official controls work, we are also responsible for an area of work in what we call portfolios. And for instance, we have the portfolio or the welfare portfolio or the training and development, the poultry portfolio, where the idea is to retain the knowledge gained through the years. We dedicate time as well to, to write the statements and providing evidence, attending court cases when required, and we provide support in incidents and training.
Training is one of the, one of the main things as well in our, in our career or extra, that extra time that we have and, you know, we need to fulfil. That continuing professional development of CPD set by the Royal College of 105 hours in any three-year period, which honestly is something that does not worry us too much because we easily exceed this requirement with internal training, shadowing opportunities, online courses, and so on. So you need to, to have clear what your priorities are and be able to establish those.
And all this without neglecting your work-life balance and that's, that's the key really. All these, all these sits under that umbrella of a flexible working hours scheme, which means that I have, I have a standard working week of 37 hours, 7 hours, 25 minutes per day, and I'm responsible for Keeping a record of the total hours work or leave taking on a daily basis and then a credit or debit up of up to 4 standards days may be carried over into the next accounting period. So this is sometimes easier to say than to do and it can easily go in both directions.
So you could relax too much, or you can see no end to your working day. So these are some of the skills I find essential to achieve that balance. So you need to be disciplined, you need to be self-motivated and I'm quite glad to say that we are generally very passionate about what we do.
And you need to be able to avoid, avoid distractions and focus. There is always something to do at home and you need to be comfortable with social isolation. You could spend several days just in front of your laptop completing reports and that's not for everybody.
You need to be organised and balanced and reliable. You have deadlines to comply with and obviously a strong communication skills because you spend A lot of time writing emails and, and on the phone. So thank you very much and that's all for me.
Hope you have enjoyed and happy to answer any questions later on. Thank you. Thank you, Paloma, and thank you also to Raquel.
You have been exemplary in your timings, which is now putting the pressure on me, and I'm also just going to move on to my presentation. So if you can bear with me while I do the IT. I'm going to go straight into that version.
As you can see, I'm now sort of bringing together some of the information that Raquel and Paloma have provided for you. They are, the starting points of a potential career in government veterinary services, and I'm actually gonna talk to you about my career. So, you know, it's all about me.
And one of my friends who threatened to be on this call. Said, oh, great, I'll now I'll be able to find out what you do, Jane. So I don't know whether Jo is out there, but if she is, this is my GVS veterinary career.
OK, I obviously had to start as a vet. I graduated as Anthony said, in fact, he almost covered my entire presentation in the introduction from Edinburgh in the 90s. And I started off as I expected to do and as I think most UK graduates do in mixed practise.
I really loved it. I wanted to be an equine vet. And I went to Newmarket and, you know, had a job interview with Greenwood Ellis, and they were really lovely and encouraging.
But I also had a real desire to travel. So by the time it came round to doing my sort of 2nd, 3rd job in practise, I thought I might do that overseas. And you can see a couple of flags there.
I went to New Zealand, on, well, As part of my round the world travels, and worked in, out of hours, clinics and as a locum in Auckland. I loved it. I love the Kiwis.
They're amazing people. And I do miss it. I left my best friend there and my godson, so I get to visit quite often.
But also you'll see a Hong Kong flag, and I had some friends who were working in Hong Kong and I worked for the SPCA there while I was over watching the rugby Hong Kong vens, which was really handy to be paid a little bit of cash for some work, to fund the excitement of the vens. But you can see from this, you know, I also looked at complementary medicine, rehabilitation, I I even considered a law conversion degree, but I had never considered a government veterinary services career, and that is until 2001. And Foot and mouth disease was all consuming in the UK as you know, the estimates were that there were direct costs of sort of 3 billion, to the UK, UK economy and indirect cost of.
Around 7 billion pounds. This was something that even I come back to rugby, even cancelled a rugby international. It was very serious.
It was all hands on deck and I was working in Leeds at the time and joined as a temporary veterinary inspector of the state veterinary Service. As it was then called, and it was eye opening for me, and I think for many other UK graduates as to the value of and the experience and expertise that government veterinary services, and government vets bring to our communities and to to the UK as a whole. So.
I'll move on from the pictures of foot and mouth disease, into the fact that at the end of that year, I spent a whole year as a temporary veterinary inspector, I was, encouraged to apply to be a veterinary officer, which is the equivalent of Raquel's role as a senior veterinary inspector in the state veterinary service. Started off in Lincoln, which was close to home for me, so went to various farms and found out that people knew my family, which was always a nice start. Paloma spoke about sometimes it being quite difficult our job.
We're often not welcome. And if you can bring that, understanding of the farming community, potentially someone who remembers your mother or your grandfather, it really helps to break the ice. But you will also see that while I was in, Lincoln, I led on animal byproducts.
Now that was an area I never expected. And if you look at the top right hand corner of the screen, there are some vertical composting units. And I became quite an expert on composting, of animal byproducts.
Again, something you don't expect to do when you're a vet school, but all of the skills that you've learned at vet school of taking a history, applying your knowledge, developing plans. They, all the things that you might do in a 10 minute consultation are transferable to the work that we do in government veterinary services. And we were able to transfer our knowledge and our veterinary expertise to applying animal byproducts regulations.
I then moved to Leeds. I do like to move a lot and we've talked a little bit about work-life balance, and I'm maybe not the best example of that, but this is just my career and I love to move. And in Leeds, I led on TB Raquel spoke to you about TB being such an important part of her work down in Devon.
Now, it was important in Yorkshire too. After foot and mouth disease, some TB had been relocated to Yorkshire, and people were being exposed to TB breakdowns. So the farmers have never experienced this before, so it was new and frightening for them.
So really important to communicate how we were going to work with them to get them through this really difficult phase of their farming careers. But I always like to do things differently, and while I was in Leeds, the president of the Association of Government Veterinarians er was in the same office as me. I don't know how many of you out there are members of the BVA or any of their specialist branches, but the Association of Association of Government Vets is a, a specialist division of the BVA and, has the remit to, communicate, the role of the government vet, but also, to develop continuing professional development events and so on.
And I became the treasurer there, and then their junior vice president and finally their president, and this was all back in 2000. 78, and really exposed me to the wider side of, the veterinary profession and gave me the opportunity to champion the role of government vets within the wider profession, which I still continue to do. I probably need to move on more quickly.
I'm just conscious that I'm speaking too much. So I'm going back to the day job. And at the end of those, sort of 4 or 5 years as a veterinary officer, I took the opportunity to get a, a role in the operational, delivery policy interface, and that was as a veterinary services manager.
You'll see that the name of my organisation has changed, Animal Health and then Animal Health and Veterinary laboratories Agency in government. The thing that is constant is that things will change. But actually I think we do it pretty well, although it can be quite difficult, you know, having to experience change.
I think we do manage it well, we talk to people and we try to give people the opportunity to contribute to the way that we work. So this was fascinating, coming from Yorkshire, I was involved, where I was involved with TB delivery on the ground. I led on the translation of the policy development into operational delivery, but also provided practical delivery advice to policy makers on TB for 2 years.
And then I moved to animal welfare, and this was a really important, moment for me. The current chief veterinary officer, Christine Milms was my, my manager at the time, and she asked me to move to animal welfare. And I didn't feel comfortable.
I said, I'm an expert of TB, you know, what can I bring to animal welfare? And what she said was, you can bring your approach. Your transferable skills, and you will learn the detail.
And I think that's something that I always want to emphasise to people. There may be small animal vets out there who go, I couldn't possibly work for the government because I work in small animal practise. You come with those veterinary skills, those transferable skills, and my, my challenge to you is, why couldn't you work in the veterinary government veterinary services?
I think you potentially could. So that was a really important move for me and it, it broadened my portfolio. You'll also see that's a 2 year period and another 2 year period.
I don't do any job for very long. And so it's always a steep learning curve, but always very exciting. I am never bored, I am always challenged.
And this was the next challenge. There was an opportunity, to have a 2, just over 2 years to comment, into DEFRA as the head of EU relations for animal health and welfare. This was a real exposure to that bigger picture, the difference that we can make, not just on a local and national level, but on an international stage.
I represented the UK in EU committee meetings in Brussels. Those were the meetings where safeguard measures, for example, you may be aware that African swine fever is is very prominent in Eastern Europe at the moment and safeguard measures are put in place to protect the rest of the EU from the disease in in Eastern Europe. And those decisions were made in these these committee meetings.
I also supported the Chief Veterinary Officer in Paris at the World Animal Health organisation, the OIE. I will not try to pronounce the French name because my languages, I have to say, are terrible, and it's the one regret of my life is that I cannot speak foreign languages as well as I would like to. This is where you really realise that you are making a difference on an international level.
The Chief Adary officer at the time was away from the General Assembly forum. And I was holding the UK chair at the time and we represented the whole of the EU in areas on the code coordination. So the World Animal Health organisation has codes in order to underpin and support international trade in animal and animal products, and that includes animal welfare.
And I made the intervention on behalf of, at the time, all 27 member states of the EU, at the World Animal Health Organisation's General Assembly on, broiler breeder, genetics. And that was a difference that was made at an international level. And when I was at college, I never expected that I'd be able to do that.
I was also the lead negotiator on a piece of European legislation that underpins the the funding of national control plans such as RTB national control plan and eradication plan. And that was really fascinating because I had to work across government departments, including the infamous treasury who don't like to spend anything. And with the devolved administrations, you know, I was representing the UK, so working very closely with Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
It was an amazing time and I really enjoyed it. Until now, I always used to call that my best job ever, but I now have another great best job ever. OK.
So I came out of that. It was just a comment, it was a development opportunity and we have already mentioned that, you know, the opportunities for CPD but also for development are really great within the civil service. You can build your own career and you do need to think about it yourself.
You can't just expect that it will happen, you know, you have to take opportunities when they come along. When I came out of the EU job, I moved as a veterinary adviser to the exotic native bowel diseases team, and Raquel has already mentioned Venue. She called in that brucellosis report case to the venue team, and I would have been on the end of the phone a few years ago, taking that call.
We provided veterinary advice to the DA policy teams on exotic notifiable diseases, and we had that key coordination role in the investigation of the suspicion of the notifiable diseases. But also in the unfortunate and to be fair, relatively unlikely event of the actual confirmation of the disease, we were also central to the response to the incursion of those diseases. So I was involved at the time in a transition from the EU relations job to the venue job with diseases such as avian influenza, which was we had quite a few incidents around that time.
And that was actually one of my lead areas, which led me to my next job, and that was as definitely lead for Adrian virology in APHA. So I had worked with our disease consultant Ian Brown, who is world renowned because he is the lead, the head of both the National, the EU and the World Reference Laboratory for Avian Influenza and Newcastle disease. And I learned in that role, about science, working in biosafe, and containment facilities.
Working across the wider European, picture in the National Reference Laboratory Network. That was a picture at the bottom there of the, the Copenhagen Danish Veterinary College. And I also got to understand the framework for working with lab animals, and another veterinary career that is open to people is with the Home Office as an inspector.
And so I, I worked under that framework as well. Again, just giving a different perspective of the work that government vets can do. And having done that for a year, this, another opportunity came up, which took me to Wales.
And that's where Plume is sitting today. We're in the Cardiff office here at the FSA, but my, my role was as one of the veterinary leads in APHA in Wales. So this was really going back to that operational delivery perspective, which is great.
And working within Wales, which is a devolved administration, so it the Welsh policy, the the office of the, Chief veterinary officer of Wales, Christiane Crosser, they own that policy, and although we try to ensure that we align with with the UK wider policy, it is a devolved power and it's important that we can then reflect our local nuances. And this was really one of my roles was supporting APHA's vet and technical teams within Wales, and you can see that TB is a big area of that, but also welfare and the reporting of notifiable diseases and so on. So back to that operational delivery, working in, in the same sphere that Raquel has been doing.
And then finally, my most recent job, which is as director of Veterinary Services for the Food Standards Agency, you can see in my history, I haven't worked for the Food Standards Agency before, so I bring a really different perspective to this role, and that it does mean that I rely hugely on People like Paloma and all of their expertise, but I am the head of profession for our veterinarians and paraprofessionals. And that means that I have a responsibility for the OV led food official controls and imports and exports. I actually am based in the FSA's policy team with it and have a role in international engagement.
And I provide an assurance function. And challenge to risk assessments and epidemiology, we've talked about our instant response, and being able to, to have robust, risk assessment and then moving that into risk management. And I have a role supporting the UK's Chief Veterinary Officer, in delivering, you know, really excellent, government veterinary services.
But I also go back to, and I'm about to, to wrap up because my time is almost over. I also have a role in veterinary politics with a small P. And that builds my networks and allows me to be, successful in my current role, because when I go into a meeting, I know people and they know me, and it's a real shortcut to be able to build a really successful working relationship.
So what happened was, after I finished my D, I returned to AGV council as the UK's representative of the European Association of State Veterinary Officers. That is a a Specialist division of the Federation of Vets of Europe. You can see the little sign down at the bottom there.
And last year, I was successful in being nominated and elected as the president of the European Association of State Veterinary Offices for a two year period. You can see my first presentation at the at the FE General Assembly was actually immediately after a video of Ban Ki-moon welcoming everyone to the World Veterinary Congress in South Korea the previous year. So no pressure trying to speak after the former Secretary General of the UN.
Anyway, moving on from that, just the flavour of the the opportunities that I've had in my veterinary career. I won't go through them all again, you've heard about them, but that's just a summary of what a career can look like in government services. I tend to call it a portfolio career because what we do is have opportunities that present us, present themselves to us.
We're not necessarily successful the first time, and it's all about, and I'm coming on to this next slide really. Keeping an open mind. This is one of my favourite quotes.
It's not very highbrow. It's from a song. Everyone's free to wear sunscreen that Baz Luhrmann produced.
0, 1015 years ago. I have no idea. But I will just read it out because I think it is so important.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they want to do with their lives. And some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't.
And I, that's something I hold really dear to my heart, and I think, you know, if you are looking for a change in career, you could not do worse than looking at, have I said that the right way around? It's a good idea to look at government veterinary services, is my point. So, on that note, thank you very much for listening.
We have government veterinary services careers from farm to fork in the food chain, and I'm just going to leave a final slide. Antony relieved to hear with some useful career links and hand over to Anthony. Thank you very much, everyone.
Thank you so much, Jane, and Raquel and Paloma, that was really, really interesting, really good. So, if we keep those slides, that slide up, Dawn can actually also stick those, links into the chat box so people can click on those, otherwise you can just copy them down. If anybody's got any questions, if you want to, to put those in now, then that's .
That's great to do that, so either in the question and answer box or in the chat box. So, Margaret has asked a question, er, this is for all the presenters, what additional training did you get on the job? And on your own, you know, in your career path.
So how have you, I suppose had training in CPD around all the things that you're doing, is the GBS a good employer as far as training its team? Anthony and Margaret, should I let Raquel and Paloma say first, but what I would say is that from my perspective, you get a, you do not get better CPD provision than than within the government. It's incredibly important.
It's not just technical CPD it's also management and leadership CPD and all of those sort of soft skills as well, and I think it, it's a really good place. To to know that you're going to fulfil your career and your technical aspirations. Maybe you hand over to Paloma, yeah.
Yes, indeed that was just, just to add to what Jian said. I mean, it's, you can't believe, I mean, how many opportunities you have to, to, to train, to, to improve your, you know, your skills and any Thing you can think of, think of, you just need to put it there on the table and it's open to discussion and it's not only, it's not only as a veterinarian but also to get, you know, to this like if you need managerial skills or communication skills or any other, you know, skills that you think of, and that could be on an individual basis or it could Also be if that's identified as a, as a training need for the whole group, that's that's put forward to the training board and then once it's approved, you know, we all get, you know, that opportunity to be trained and as I said during the presentation, that's not something that worries us because it's it's very easily to, to achieve all the training that we, we need. That's great.
Are there any other questions from anybody? So, you know, the elephant in the room, I suppose, I'll, I'll dive in while people are mulling over what to, to, ask. We've got this, this little thing of trying to leave the European Union at the moment.
How is that going to affect, you know, the whole provision of of the government veterinary services and, you know, particularly, . You know, actually collaborating with our, with countries in Europe about, you know, disease that might be coming over here, is that gonna be affected, do you think by Brexit or, or is that already sorted out? That's a very tough question, Anti as you can imagine, you know, the simple answer at the moment is, that will depend on the negotiation.
What I can say is there will always be a need for veterinarians and veterinary para professionals to be involved. In government veterinary services in order to support international trade, and the the veterinary certification process, but also to maintain imports as well to make sure that any new imports are safe and for us in the Food Standards Agency that food remains what it says it is and it is safe. So absolutely and the other thing that I would say about EU exit, you know, we have lots of colleagues and both Raquel and Paloma are graduates from from Spain and therefore, you know, we're really keen to make sure that all of our EU non-UK vets are, feel safe, that they can stay here, that they have.
All the information that they need, and they are hugely valued, members of our veterinary community. But that doesn't mean to say we don't want UK graduates to also consider, government veterinary careers and with EU exit, there has never been more opportunities for vets to develop their career in different ways. So perhaps move into non-veterinary roles around international trade engagement and and so on.
So. I'd like to see it as an opportunity, but I cannot tell you what, where the end stage is going to be. And of course, you know, there, as you've said there on the, the last slide, there is the opportunity to contact an APHA ambassador.
I think to have a more detailed conversation, cos as good as these three presentations have been, there, there's quite a lot of people on the line. Who probably have very specific things that they'd like to talk about, and that's perhaps to start that process, send an email to careers at APHA.gSi.gov.uk.
Yes, and I, and I think the other thing I would say, Anthony is, and unless there's any other specific questions, you know, we've talked a lot about work-life balance, and although, you know, we're very open about the fact that, the civil service has been through quite a tough time in pay recently, but they are, you know, these are, are good jobs, they're interesting jobs, they are well paid, in comparison to other jobs at the moment. And we will continue to ensure that, you know, we, we keep a view on the wider battery profession. But basically it's not just about that high level salary.
We have great pensions, we have great maternity provisions, we have flexible working, and all of those things need to be taken into account if you're looking at that sort of basic salary and going, oh, that's not as much as I'm being paid at the moment. Remember there are all those other benefits as well, and, and have a chat with one of those APHA ambassadors because they can tell you a little bit more about that. It's certainly worth, you know, you don't know if you don't ask, do you, so to actually make a, an email and a call is if it, if it is something that you're thinking about, then, you know, I'd obviously encourage you because Raquel and Paloma, one of my big maxims is, is, you know, do what you love.
And it does sound like you're really both enjoying the er the experience of working at the government veterinary services. I do, I do. There was a silence.
I was worried. I know, I know. No, I was just probably waiting to see if Raquel was saying anything, but no, and then I don't know if you could probably sometimes we get, you know, some information gets lost if you don't see, you know, the other person's faces, but I'm quite passionate about what I do.
I do love, you know, what I, I do. And I've never thought while I was studying that I would be, you know, doing, doing this, but now that I, I, you know, I've met and you know, I know what what I can do and what we can achieve, and, you know, it's a very satisfying job and definitely, I love it. It's a very important role, Paloma, you know, you're, you're guaranteeing the, the food safety, aren't you, and you know that is.
Terribly, terribly important we see when, when things don't go right on that, you know, that There can be real big consequences for it. So, you know, thank you for all the fantastic work you do in that area. And what, what about you Raquel?
You might be muted just in case you need to unmute yourself. It, it seems like a very varied job that you have and really interesting. Yeah, hello.
So, yeah, it's a very rewarding job as well because when you are working in welfare cases and you see that you make a difference, you know, in a particular farm it's it's very rewarded and also mention that I'm glad that I had the opportunity to, to. Start working here and just to confirm that loads of training opportunities the learning and developing myself as a professional on, on this job and it's just really, really good and very interesting job as you could see my presentation. It's, every day it looks different and, we, we cover its wide range of activities, but all of them, are very important and very interesting, so yeah.
I thought the, you know, those cows in the farm were in such a poor condition and that must be really, you know, satisfying that you can go in there and. Indeed. That make a difference for them as well, and the way that whole screening system had worked.
Yes, exactly. So, . Yeah, absolutely.
Raquel Paloma, muchas gracias. Jane, also thank you very much. It's been great.
We, we don't seem to have any more questions. It's definitely food for thought, I presume old timers. Can still apply as well, even if they're in my sort of vintage.
I don't know what vintage similar to your, well, I'm, I'm early 90s, whereas I, I'm presuming you're much, much later 90s. No, no, I mean, honestly, I, I think that is one of the things about government veterinary services is that, you know, we really are an open opportunities employer. So, you know, whatever your history is, even if you don't think it is directly applicable, remember as a vet you have those transferable skills, and if you have more experience, you bring more experience and you know, obviously we'd just love to hear from you.
It's still worth an email, careers at APHA.gSi.gov.uk, have a little.
Telephone call, it, it, it doesn't cost anything apart from a few minutes of time. Again, thank you so much. Thanks everyone for listening.
Obviously this will go up on the website as well, so if you've got friends who you think, hm, maybe they should be listening to this. Real eye opening for me, really interesting what the three of you are doing. Thanks for all the great work you are doing and hopefully see you very soon.
Take care everyone, and thanks very much. Bye bye. Thank you, bye, bye.
