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Following our general presentation of the Atlas and our look at the feminisation dynamic, with this third note we begin to analyse veterinarian activity, starting with the practice of farm animal medicine.On this topic the Atlas begins by telling us how many veterinarians say they practice rural medicine: 6976, of whom 2322 are women and 4654 are men. Whilst historically speaking the veterinary profession has been built around farm animal medicine, nowadays only 38.6% (essentially men) still work in this sector.This age pyramid shows that almost half of the men practicing rural medicine are over 50, which means that over the next 15 years approximately one third of this specialist population will need to be replaced.This said, we do not know what proportion of these veterinarians practice rural medicine alone. The data include both veterinarians who have an exclusively rural practice and those who have mixed practices, be they predominantly rural or not.[caption id="attachment_807" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Exclusively farm animal Mixed, predominantly farm animal Mixed, predominantly other Mixed, other Mixed, livestock[/caption]Here we see one of the more unusual aspects of veterinary specialisations: they are not exclusive, and some veterinarians work with both small and large animals. ((However, this multi-specialisation is ineffective: the development of large surgeries in rural zones would appear to mark a division of labour (particularly by species). Unfortunately, the way the Atlas data are organised (based on the notion of “declared competency”) does not really allow us to see how this division operates and whether or not the veterinarians who work exclusively with small animals in a mixed surgery (but who may occasionally stand in for one of their rural colleagues for an on-call shift or during holidays) are registered as small animals or mixed veterinarians)).The distribution of (multi-)specialisation within the profession is also linked to how farms are spread throughout the country.The geographical spread of veterinarians having declared a farm animal competency can be seen in several maps in the Atlas, though we only present four of them here. We can see an almost perfect overlay of veterinary practice locations and cattle rearing zones in a given region. The overlay is slightly less perfect for poultry and pig farms: whilst Brittany has a high concentration of both farms and veterinarians, zones where pig farming is relatively well-developed, such as the Massif Central, would appear to contain far fewer specialist vets. It would therefore be useful to more accurately specify the type of farm (perhaps less intensive?), to learn how the farmers work and who they call upon to look after their animals. The veterinarian’s role, i.e. his/her relationship with clients and the area of expertise that he/she provides, is linked to the type of farms on which he/she works.Dwindling numbers of farm vets?It may seem surprising that nowadays less than half of vets work with livestock. Historically speaking, veterinary medicine developed as a specialisation in farm animals (including horses which, until the 19th century, were also vital for transport and for the army), with rural vets constituting the backbone of the profession since time immemorial. The current reversal began in the 1960s, with a shift towards so-called “small-animal” vets, i.e. those specialising in caring for pets (Hubscher, 1999). As far as Great Britain is concerned, A. Gardiner has shown that the rise in the number of small-animal practices began even earlier, as far back as the 1930s (Gardiner, 2014). Whilst fears have been expressed at other moments in the past, this radical evolution has led to very considerable concern within the profession over the last decade and a half (Woods, 2011): will rural veterinarians cease to exist? What will the consequences be? In both Great Britain and France these questions have led to reports by the relevant authorities and to articles in the professional press. In France, we might mention the Risse (2001) and Guéné (2008) reports, these being the most emblematic. In Great Britain, the Lowe report (by researchers from SHS and from the veterinary sciences) marked an important moment in thinking about the future and the recomposition of the rural veterinary profession: it suggested a renewed veterinary services offering and changes to the animal health market, along with an evolution in links between the profession and the government. In both France and Great-Britain, the VetFutures projects and the demographic Atlas (whose publication incited us, in part, to publish our series of articles on this blog) are also evidence of the salience of these stakes at the present time.This particular context – one of uncertainty, where it is necessary to invent new forms of professional practice – is also at the heart of most social science articles on veterinary work. ((Here it should be noted that the articles we present were all written in Great Britain, where research on the veterinary profession, whilst relatively uncommon, is nevertheless far more developed than in France)).[caption id="attachment_811" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Source : Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Borden - Cows - Veterinarian examination" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1935 - 1945. (Lien en cliquant sur l'image)[/caption]&#160;Some research projects focus first and foremost on the reactions and expectations of farm vets: for example, the researchers working with Annmarie Ruston (2016) carried out a series of interviews to assess the extent to which British veterinarians were aware of ongoing evolutions and were ready to cope with them. The researchers took as their starting point the growing number of recommendations made to veterinarians in the various reports on the future of their profession: they were invited to imagine new economic models for a context involving a decreasing number of farms, and to change the way they practice by shifting from an essentially curative approach to one that focuses more on prevention. It is a case of intervening less as “emergency services” and of taking on the role of ongoing advisors to farmers. What did they think of this type of recommendation? Generally speaking, the vets interviewed as part of the study agreed with the findings of the foresight reports: they had noticed the drop in veterinary public health work carried out on behalf of public authorities (mainly tests for bovine tuberculosis), the competition from other professionals visiting farms, and a certain backwardness in the way they manage their surgeries and charge for the services they provide. Given this, 75% of them felt that they had changed their way of working, attaching greater importance to prevention and thus concentrating more on the herd as a whole rather than on individual animals ((which to some extent remains a relatively limited vision of what “preventive veterinary medicine” might consist – dealing not only with animal health issues but also with other farming matters that might be specifically zootechnical, economic or administrative. This does not mean that this is a suitable direction for the future of the veterinary profession, but simply that these are debates which have taken and continue to take place within the profession (Woods, 2013))). This said, few of these vets had changed their modalities of remuneration (in surgeries that practice it, contractualisation concerns less than 10% of clients), and they did not use as a commercial argument the specialist label (Farm Animal Accreditation) they had obtained - and generally speaking they had taken no deliberate action to solicit new clients. The model that remains the most relevant is the one whereby a vet has built up a client base, knows it inside out, has grown with his clients over the years and maintains a very close relationship with them. Regarding the development of preventive veterinary medicine, the interviewees mentioned numerous practical difficulties: they are in competition with other professionals with whom they generally have no real contact and with whom they may well disagree; they are unable to establish a dialogue that is sufficiently in-depth to truly help farmers and they do not feel comfortable enough to develop the relational and communication skills that this would require; finally, they have the impression that farmers do not listen to them, or at least not as much as when they intervene on a curative basis.This same question of developing a new way of being a livestock veterinarian is central to the work of Colette Henry, Sarah Baillie and Jonathan Rushton, who have chosen a different perspective: they paint the picture of a young veterinarian, Sally, and use her career path to establish “lasting” modalities for setting up a veterinary practice in a rural setting (Henry &#38; al., 2016). Their article retraces the trials and tribulations that punctuated the creation of her practice; for example, how hard it was to develop her entrepreneurial and managerial skills, or to combine her pregnancy and her role as a business manager. The authors highlight four aspects affecting the success of such a business: 1/ its “place”, which requires it to be set up in an area where there is a high demand for such services, but where she can also link up with a network of partners and collaborators in order to diversify the service offering (joining a “group” or “network” of veterinary practices for example); 2/ its “people”, which relates to the difficulty of recruiting professionals with varied skills that meet the new needs of farmers; 3/ its “processes”, which underline the need to build an economic and contractual model that will ensure the longevity of the pratice, and a marketing strategy that will enhance the attractiveness of the offering; 4/ finally, the “products”, whether in terms of goods or services, must consist of tools and forms of expertise that meet the demands of the clientele (laboratory analyses, farm analysis, zootechnical advice, etc.), thus making it possible to diversify the business’s sources of income and making them less dependent on the sale of drugs – something that was for a long time the main (if not only) source of revenue.Still with the idea of exploring the new model for rural practice, Lindsay Hamilton has focused on modifications to the relational skills that veterinarians employ with their clients (Hamilton, 2017). Indeed, when veterinary expertise no longer simply means treating an animal on a curative emergency basis, it involves an in-depth dialogue with the farmer and a reciprocal collaborative learning process. Whilst Hamilton accepts that veterinarians possess professional knowledge (marked by a scientific understanding of health issues) that differs from that of farmers, she is nevertheless critical of the communication model that vets generally try to follow (and that they very often believe to be effective). She considers that evidence-based medicine approaches – that the profession currently tends to promote, sometimes in response to the uncertainties surrounding the future of the veterinary profession and therefore to the need to reinvent it to some extent – do not constitute an expertise model (and therefore a service offering) that will allow vets to find a central and lasting place on livestock farms. She believes that interaction between veterinarians and farmers should not be seen as a mere transfer of knowledge and skills, and that farmers’ needs go beyond the purely scientific and technical.To illustrate this idea, she takes the example of lameness-related farm visits and attempts to characterise the discussions that take place on such occasions. First and foremost, she notes that in this area veterinarians have considerable competition, with many consultants being involved. She goes on to show how hard it is to correctly describe what breeders require, even for an apparently simple matter such as lameness. Whilst vets very often stress the importance of treating lameness for economic reasons, she finds that farmers can have more varied concerns than mere financial benefit: simplifying work, ensuring animal welfare, envisaging an evolution in the way the farm is run, etc. If the veterinarian-farmer relationship is to meet these different concerns, the response must be co-constructed – it is not enough for vets to provide and impose a supposedly “expert” opinion on their clients. Farmer participation in formulating a solution is an important aspect if the changes made are to be a success. Under such conditions, whilst the tendency of vets to provide farmers with solutions in the form of prescriptions is sometimes appropriate, this is not always the case and Hamilton’s article quite rightly calls for vets to take into account the complexity and variety of situations in which they and their clients are involved.[caption id="attachment_810" align="aligncenter" width="420"] Source : Fourth-year veterinary student trims a dairy cow’s hoofs while the tilt table holds the animal airborne. University of Saskatchewan, Western College of veterinary medicine. 2014. (Lien en cliquant sur l'image)[/caption]&#160;A vet’s life: all creatures clean and filthyAlthough above-mentioned articles relate to rural practice, they only examine the strategies and organisation of veterinary surgeries, without looking at the daily tasks and gestures of rural vets (unlike research on small animal practice, which is based on the observation of work done in the surgery). In this respect, L. Hamilton’s ethnographic research on a rural surgery of 12 veterinarians and 10 assistants is an exception (Hamilton, 2007, 2013). She takes an original approach in the sense that she has chosen to study the relationship that veterinarians have with the less pleasant aspects of their work – the filth, the waste, the blood, the excrement, etc. She makes the hypothesis that this is a particularly pertinent analyser of professional work, status and symbols. First of all, she shows that rural practice and small-animal practice do not involve the same relationship with filth. In a practice where owners bring their pets to the surgery, cleanliness is vital, both for the clients, and with regard to medical protocol and laboratory tests. On the other hand, it is normal for farm animal veterinarians to be covered with mud and excrement. L. Hamilton notes that most of the joking among vets revolves around these aspects and sees it as a way of establishing camaraderie between peers, a distinction between those who are up to their knees in dung and those who never get their shoes wet. Whilst this distinction divides vets into their specialisations, it is also a challenge for mixed practitioners who sometimes have to greet small-pet owners after returning from a farm visit and who must therefore take on several roles. It also separates the vets from the surgery’s other personnel who do not visit farms and who are responsible for cleaning the premises. Hamilton looks at the many small conflicts that surround the cleaning issue and highlights the different levels of importance that individuals attach to dirt. Vets see it as a symbol of their know-how and dedication to animal work. Furthermore, the biological samples they bring back to the surgery are of medical interest; they are used to make a diagnosis or form an integral part of laboratory analyses. For all of these reasons, veterinarians reverse the stigma that dirt brings with it. For the surgery personnel on the other hand, waste material symbolises the paternalistic relationship that veterinarians have with their assistants, and the assistants’ impression that they are being treated as cleaners, within a non-professional and domestic relationship (it should be noted that there is also a gender division between the male vets and the female surgery staff). At the end of the day, whilst the subject matter of this research may seem anecdotal, it throws light on interesting characteristics of the workplace, of the hierarchical relationships and of the way a rural veterinary practice is organised.However interesting this panorama may be, one cannot fail to be struck by two aspects of work on the veterinary profession: 1/ there is very little research, especially in French; 2/ the research that does exist relates for the most part to cattle breeding. Yet it is by no means absurd to suggest that innovative veterinary practices also concern the intensive batch rearing of pigs or poultry. Or that bird or pig specialisations encourage the development of other forms of expertise and other professional models (economic in particular) and that they have different relationships with these constantly renewed demands to shift towards so-called preventive medicine. There is no doubt that this gap in our understanding of the diverse nature of veterinary activities shows that there is a need to develop research projects to compare European countries and different branches of the profession.&#160;&#160;ReferencesGardiner, 2014, The ‘dangerous’ women of Animal Welfare: How British veterinary medicine went to the dogs, Social History of Medicine, 27, 3, p. 466-487.Hamilton, 2007, Muck and magic: Cultural transformations in the world of farm animal veterinary surgeons, Ethnography, 8, p. 485-501.Hamilton, 2013, The magic of mundane objects: culture, identity and power in a country vets’ practice, The sociological review, 61, p. 265, 284.Hamilton, 2017, Bridging the divide between theory and practice: Taking a co-productive approach to vet-farmer relationships, Food ethics, published online.Henry &#38; al., 2016, Exploring the sustainability of small rural veterinary enterprise, Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development, 23, 1, p. 259-273.Hubscher, 1999, Les maîtres des bêtes, Les vétérinaires dans la société française, (XVIIIe-XXe siècle), Paris, Odile Jacob.Guéné, 2008, Vers une profession vétérinaire du XXIème siècle, Rapport au Premier Ministre et au Ministre de l’Agriculture et de la Pêche, Paris.Lowe, 2009, Unlocking potential. A report on veterinary expertise in food animal production, Report to the vets and the veterinary services steering group, DEFRA, London.Risse, 2001, Les vétérinaires ruraux et le mandat sanitaire, Rapport pour le ministère de l’Agriculture. ParisRuston &#38; al., 2016, Challenges facing the farm animal veterinary profession in England: A qualitative study of veterinarians’ perceptions and responses, Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 127, p. 84-93.Woods, 2011, The Lowe report and its echoes from history, Veterinary Record, 169, p. 434-436.Woods, 2013, Is prevention better than cure? The rise and fall of veterinary preventive medicine, c. 1950-1980, Social History of Medicine, 26, 1, p. 113-131.