Mixed Veterinary Practice

Dr. Anthony Andrews qualified from the Royal Veterinary College with the degree of Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine (B.Vet.Med.) on 1 st. January 1966. He was admitted to Membership of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (M.R.C.V.S.) on 7 th. January 1966. Subsequently he spent the next five and a half years working in mixed veterinary practice in Cornwall (Falmouth), Surrey (Cranleigh) and the Isle of Wight (Ryde). During that time he saw, diagnosed, treated and prevented all the major disease and management conditions on large and small farms. He also set up protocols and participated in preventive medicine and herd management schemes for cattle, sheep, poultry and pigs. He also undertook clinical work in companion animals and horses as well as performing surgery in dogs and cats.

Royal Smithfield Club Research Fellowship

In October 1970 he was awarded the Royal Smithfield Club Scholarship tenable in the Department of Animal Husbandry and Hygiene, the Royal Veterinary College. His work involved the study of teeth, particularly in cattle, and their development in health and disease. This resulted in changes to the Smithfield Rules governing the dentition of cattle and their use to estimate age at agricultural shows. He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree for this work

Veterinary Officer/Senior Veterinary Officer, Meat and Livestock Commission

Subsequently Dr. Andrews spent nearly six years at the Meat and Livestock Commission (MLC), initially as a Veterinary Officer and he was promoted to Senior Veterinary Officer in 1977. His responsibilities included the animal health and veterinary policy for the six Meat and Livestock Commission Bull Performance Testing Centres and two Breed Evaluation Units as well as the Calf and Beef Units at the Royal Agricultural Society of England's Showground at Stoneleigh, Warwickshire. His role was to ensure local practising veterinary surgeons maintained similar health standards at each unit and to work and advise managers on husbandry procedures. He also produced and oversaw disease, preventive medicine and welfare on Meat and Livestock Pig Performance Testing Stations, Commercial Pig Evaluation Unit and on private farms.

He was also partly responsible for much of the production of the Warble Fly Eradication Scheme and liaison with Government departments, pharmaceutical companies and other interested parties to initiate such a scheme. This began on a voluntary basis before being taken up by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) and later being made a notifiable disease. This led to the successful removal of the parasite from Great Britain until 1993 when it was reintroduced with infected imported cattle. It has subsequently again been eradicated. He went to abattoirs in Britain to look at methods of disease information retrieval, to obtain sample materials including for tissue residues and undertaken hygiene and other studies. He was involved in the creation of a Sheep Health Scheme. He taught MLC fatstock officers how to determine age of animals once they were carcasses etc.

His position at MLC involved producing information for government departments, the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. He became Secretary of the British Cattle Veterinary Association and later its President. He was also a member and, subsequently, Chairman of the Large Animals Committee of the British Veterinary Association (BVA) and then initiated and became first Chairman of a new BVA committee known as the Science, Education and Marketing Committee. During this period he was the main instigator of the Animal Health and Management Scheme (AHMS), which in collaboration with the National Farmers Union undertook exercises in educating farmers as to how best to use veterinary services.

Senior Lecturer, Royal Veterinary College

In 1979 Dr. Andrews took up appointment as Senior Lecturer in Farm Animal Medicine at the Royal Veterinary College where he remained for seventeen years. He was concerned with and on two short occasions he acted as temporary Head of the Farm Animal Department. He arranged and managed teaching, and undertook clinical and research responsibilities in cattle as well as at times in sheep, goats, deer, pigs, poultry, llamas and other exotic and wild animals. He later arranged and ran the Farm Animal Elective Course for final year students which was usually fully subscribed. Besides disease, he has worked and written on management, nutrition, economics, welfare, preventive medicine and farm assurance in the major farm species. He has been responsible for the publication of over 130 scientific papers, as well as many articles on veterinary matters in the agricultural, veterinary and lay press. He has visited abattoirs to obtain specimens for various testing procedures including medicine and toxicological residues and evaluated slaughterhouse procedures, methods and hygiene. He undertook and monitored various studies on the clinical use and pharmacological activity of various medicines including antibiotics, anti-inflammatory agents, probiotics, etc.

Books Written

He has written several books including "Calf Management and Disease Notes", "Growing Cattle Management and Disease Notes - Part 1: Management", "Growing Cattle Management and Disease Notes - Part 2: Disease", "Outline of Clinical Diagnosis in Cattle". He has been senior author or editor of other books including "Henston Veterinary Vade Mecum (Large Animals) Part 1 and Part 11" which has run into several editions and involved the major diseases in cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs and was completely rewritten and updated in 1997. He edited and wrote much of "Poisoning in Veterinary Practice" and, the main editor and author of "Bovine Medicine" which is the first complete authoritative book on cattle disease and management produced in Britain over at least the last twenty years published 1992. He edited "Health of Dairy Cattle", is co-author of "The Expectant Cow". The second enlarged edition of “Bovine Medicine” (2004) was published in November 2003. He was Assistant Editor of Black’s Veterinary Dictionary in 1998, 2001 and 2005 and is Joint Editor of the 22nd Edition first published in 2015. He has made contributions to Merek Veterinary Manual.

Disease Monitoring

From May 1995 to 2006 he was involved in the procurement and dissemination of information on disease incidence in farm animals from practising veterinary surgeons throughout the United Kingdom, which formed the basis for a monthly Disease Profile distributed to veterinary surgeons and also used by the "Farmers Weekly". The service is known as the National Animal Disease Information Service (NADIS) and was awarded research contracts by the Milk Development Council and several pharmaceutical companies. He was also Livestock Editor of the veterinary journal "UK Vet". He continues to undertake disease monitoring, recording and reporting in farm species with veterinary surgeons and farmers.

Recent Offices Held

He has been President of the Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire Veterinary Society, is on the Council of the Goat Veterinary Society and was its Chairman from 1997 to 2014, was on the Council of the BVA from 1989 to 2010 and from July 2008 to 2010 he was a member of BVA’s Membership Services Group and was on the Council of Veterinary Association of Arbitration and Jurisprudence from 1996 to 2006 and had been Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Council. In 2003 he was appointed Director for the Responsible Use of Medicines in Agriculture Alliance (RUMA) and continued until December 31st 2009. The group contains representatives of all organisations from “stable to table”, and is concerned with the use of medicines in food producing animals, pharmacovigilence, prevention of residues in food, etc. The work of RUMA is at present being closely studied by European Community organisations. Part of these responsibilities include being a member of the Working Party concerned with the Implementation of the Animal Health and Welfare Strategy (AHWS), a new initiative of the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Development (DEFRA). RUMA is now heavily involved in reducing antibiotic usage on farms. Partly because of his work at RUMA, he was awarded in 2010 the first National Office of Animal Health (NOAH) Award for Contributions to Animal Health.

He was Chief Executive of the European School of Veterinary Postgraduate Studies (ESVPS) from 2004 to July 2013, which provides General Practitioner Certificates (GPCerts) to veterinary surgeons following courses of study and examinations currently in Ireland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain and United Kingdom. In 2005 he became Director of Embryo Veterinary School, a three-day course for school sixth-formers about the reality of becoming a veterinary surgeon. It was undertaken three to five times a year and he continued to do this until July 2012.

He was on the judging panel for the newly established Large Animal (Farm Welfare) category of the Ceva Welfare Awards, first to be awarded in 2014 to 2020.

Independent Veterinary Consultant

Dr. Andrews resigned from the Royal Veterinary College in January 1997 and has subsequently been acting as an independent veterinary consultant. He is regularly visiting farms to provide support for practising veterinary surgeons. He has giving advice on health and welfare matters to the NFU and was technical adviser to a committee looking at the use of antimicrobial products and another on bovine tuberculosis control. He has provided advice on the use of veterinary medicines to other national organisations and has talked on this subject widely. He has acted as a consultant to some pharmaceutical companies, companies advising pharmaceutical companies on medicines and food issues and an agricultural company. He held an honorary research lectureship at Writtle Agricultural College, Essex University from 1979 to 2007. He has recently been involved in writing on feeding the world population in 2050.

He continues to write and is often quoted in the veterinary, agricultural and national press and the media. He has been Animal Health adviser to the largest dairy herd in the world, which is based in Saudi Arabia. In 1998 he was appointed examiner at the Cambridge and Royal (Dick) Edinburgh veterinary schools for three years and was also in 2003 to 2005 an examiner for the Finals examination at the Royal Veterinary College and again from 2007 to the present. He acted as an assessor for the Health and Welfare module for the Years 1 and 2 courses of the new Nottingham Veterinary School in 2007 and 2008 and in April 2010 he became an assessor of the Clinical Rotations in Years 4 and 5, the rotations commenced in 2010. He assisted in a Ministry of Farming, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) funded project on the actual amount of usage of antimicrobial agents on farms with Entec Limited in 2001.

He was Director of a Continuing Education course for veterinary surgeons in Cattle Health and Production which developed into a Continuing Education course in Ruminant Health and Production. He was for many years directing a Modular Course for the Certificate in the General Practitioner Certificate (Farm Animal Practice). He gives talks on numerous subjects over the whole of the United Kingdom on many different subjects. He was appointed by the Minister of Health as a Commissioner of The British Pharmacopoeia Commission (March 1998 to December 2007) and was a member of the Expert Advisory Group on Antibiotics. He was a Member of the MAFF Beef Assurance Scheme Membership Panel, later run by the Food Standards Agency until its cessation in December 2005. He is a Member of the British Institute of Agricultural Consultants and was elected a Fellow in January 2009.

He lectured on animal health in Lithuania prior to the country’s entry to the EEC. In July 2001 he began an assignment as consultant to the World Bank/Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations Emergency Farm Reconstruction Project, Kosovo. For three years recently he was an independent consultant to one of the major British supermarkets, Safeway until it was taken over. He has undertaken national surveys on calf pneumonia and its costs, infectious and management causes of calf diarrhoea, incidence of coccidiosis in calves, costs of respiratory disease in sheep, the cost effectiveness of treating disease. In 2002 he was appointed as a judge for the Pharmacia, now Pfizer Animal Health, Quality Milk Award until it ceased, and the Beef Student of the Year Award. He has undertaken the design and monitoring of some studies on the use and testing of specific medicines including efficacy, withdrawal periods, etc. for use in farm animals prior to their registration. Since 2000 he has lectured for many companies and organisations in Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Kosovo, Lithuania, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom and the United States of America. He created and managed a distance learning course for veterinary surgeons at Massey University, New Zealand on Calf Medicine, Health and Management which has been successfully run in 2012, 2014 and 2016.

He was awarded the Chiron Award of the British Veterinary Association for 2018 'In recognition of his distinctive contributions to the profession and as a true champion of farm animal veterinary medicine in the UK and internationally'.

The Chiron Award 2018

He was awarded The British Veterinary Association’s Chiron Award 2018 on 20th September 2018.

The Award citation read:

‘In recognition of his distinctive contributions to the profession and as a true champion of farm animal veterinary medicine in the UK and internationally.’

‘He has made an outstanding contribution to advancing expertise and driving specialisation in the ruminant sector; informing farmers and the veterinary profession about important animal health and welfare matters; contributing to education and livestock welfare and management; speaking out and challenging the authorities to take on important and controversial issues; and nurturing many generations of the veterinary profession.’

‘In striving to do the best for the profession and the health and welfare of livestock throughout the world, he has had a major influence on this sector and the profession and livestock industry by giving clear, well informed opinion relating to farm animals.’