The vet is in: P.E.I. now has a full-time provincial veterinarian

P.E.I. now has a full time provincial veterinarian and she has a broad range of creatures that she's looking out for.

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"Pretty much any animal you can consider, so we go from honey bees all the way through to swine, poultry, finfish, so it pretty much covers everything," said Dr. Carolyn Sanford, who is trained as a veterinarian and worked most recently as P.E.I.'s epidemiologist.

"We have to develop our disease emergency planning, that's important to protect our industries and make sure we have things in place."

The provincial veterinarian gives policy and legislative advice connected to animal health and welfare. P.E.I. recently-proclaimed a new Animal Welfare Act.

Disease watch

Sanford will also focus on disease prevention under the Animal Health Act.

"We're certainly looking at doing more disease surveillance," she said.

"That may include adding a list of notifiable diseases provincially that occur to animals so that we can get information to track incidence of disease across various animals."

The list would be similar to what the Public Health Officer does for human diseases.

"It helps us to do some trends, what's going on, see if we're seeing more that we would expect for certain diseases and be able to do some action accordingly," she said.

"Poultry diseases, swine diseases, bee diseases, cattle, you name it."

Sanford says she's currently looking at what other provinces consider reportable diseases and then will create a list for P.E.I.

"We'll also be doing some what's called One Health work where we work together with Public Health on diseases that impact both animals and humans."

Finfish sector

The provincial veterinarian's duties also relate to the cultured finfish industry on Prince Edward Island, which includes Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, halibut and brook trout.

"We'll also be working a lot in aquaculture, ensuring that the fish that are moving from various aquaculture facilities are as disease-free as possible," said Sanford.

"We've been doing a lot of work with the other Atlantic provinces to standardize our surveillance techniques in the fish farms."

'Same advantages'

The president of the Island Finfish Growers Association is excited that the provincial veterinarian position will now be full time.

"Our finfish sector is growing and in order for us to remain competitive with the other provinces, it's really important for us to have the same advantages and that includes a finfish veterinarian," said Dawn Runighan.

"It definitely shows that the provincial government realizes that the finfish sector is very important."

Runighan says other growers in the Atlantic provinces have had access to a provincial veterinarian for years.

"We had local veterinarians that had some fish training and we've also contracted veterinarians from off Island to do some of this work," she said.

"The sector will still use outside veterinarians as well, that will be required as part of our policies, but it will definitely save us money."

Position needed

For many years, P.E.I. was the only province without a provincial veterinarian. The work was handled through contract veterinarians and a partnership with AVC.

In 2016, it became a part-time position and now full time.

"With the merger of Agriculture and Fisheries, it was a real good synergy to really need a position here to cover the aquaculture sector and the terrestrial animals as well," said Sanford.