When I was a meat inspector in abattoirs around the Bristol area, we would have vet students come and spend a week with us, learning not only disease recognition on a fast moving line, but also judgement.
Of course the students all knew what pleurisy or an infected abscess or hydronephrosis was, and probably how to treat in in a live animal, but not how severe it needed to be before that meant the carcass was condemned, or a leg removed, or the pleura was stripped out then passed as fit for consumption. Vets are (or were then) focussed on helping animals to get over an illness, not whether an animal carcass would be fit to enter the food chain.
Our senior went to the vet college at Langford a few times a year and set out a large table of various body parts and viscera with differing conditions gleaned from the previous week’s throughput, for recognition and discussion. The room was always packed, I attended as an interested helper on a few occasions, so I know the students thought it a wonderful afternoon which invariably overran as questions and discussion ensued.
I think if stalkers could attend such a day, it would be of more general utility than setting up a fund to explore niche findings, interesting as they might be.
There are many questions on SD about innocuous findings that do not affect the fitness to put into the food chain, ie minor pneumonia, lungworm, liver conditions and bloodied lungs, most recently, which could be put to bed at such a class.
Given the seemingly low level of general disease and condition knowledge, no wonder many countries like the States don’t allow hunter shot game to enter to retail food chain, being only for home consumption. My favourite on here from a few years back suggested that it may be necessary to incinerate clothing after being in close proximity to a probable TB infected carcass.
I see there are only 16 replies to the questionnaire from a base of some 38000 SD members, so perhaps the interest level isn’t that high, but I would bet an afternoon as described above would prove immensely popular from one of you vet guys.
Of course the students all knew what pleurisy or an infected abscess or hydronephrosis was, and probably how to treat in in a live animal, but not how severe it needed to be before that meant the carcass was condemned, or a leg removed, or the pleura was stripped out then passed as fit for consumption. Vets are (or were then) focussed on helping animals to get over an illness, not whether an animal carcass would be fit to enter the food chain.
Our senior went to the vet college at Langford a few times a year and set out a large table of various body parts and viscera with differing conditions gleaned from the previous week’s throughput, for recognition and discussion. The room was always packed, I attended as an interested helper on a few occasions, so I know the students thought it a wonderful afternoon which invariably overran as questions and discussion ensued.
I think if stalkers could attend such a day, it would be of more general utility than setting up a fund to explore niche findings, interesting as they might be.
There are many questions on SD about innocuous findings that do not affect the fitness to put into the food chain, ie minor pneumonia, lungworm, liver conditions and bloodied lungs, most recently, which could be put to bed at such a class.
Given the seemingly low level of general disease and condition knowledge, no wonder many countries like the States don’t allow hunter shot game to enter to retail food chain, being only for home consumption. My favourite on here from a few years back suggested that it may be necessary to incinerate clothing after being in close proximity to a probable TB infected carcass.
I see there are only 16 replies to the questionnaire from a base of some 38000 SD members, so perhaps the interest level isn’t that high, but I would bet an afternoon as described above would prove immensely popular from one of you vet guys.
