Lack of federal veterinarians could hamper government response to disease outbreaks

Update: The Office of Personnel Management issued a memo on Feb. 12 granting agencies the authority to expedite the hiring of veterinarian medical officer positions at the GS-11 through GS-15 grade levels. The story has been clarified to reflect the news. The federal government has a dangerous shortage of veterinarians, putting the nation at risk in case of a major public health emergency, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

"No effort is being made to assess the sufficiency of the veterinarian workforce governmentwide," said the report. "[The Office of Personnel Management] has not conducted a governmentwide effort to address current and future veterinarian shortages identified by component agencies, as it has done for other professions, and efforts by the Congress to address the national shortage have thus far had minimal impact."

OPM said it is working to address the shortage of vets governmentwide. The agency in a Feb. 12 memo granted direct-hire authority for veterinarian medical officer jobs nationwide at the General Schedule 11 through 15 grade levels.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Federal Workforce Subcommittee provided a copy of the GAO report, which has not been released yet, to Government Executive.

Twenty-seven percent of the veterinarians at the Army; Food and Drug Administration; and the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Food Safety and Inspection Service, and Agricultural Research Service, will be eligible to retire by 2012, according to the report.

Some of those agencies already are understaffed. FSIS has not met its full staff level in a decade, GAO reported. In fiscal 2008, the agency aimed to employ 1,134 veterinarians, but had only 968 physicians on staff. Since fiscal 2003, the number of FSIS veterinarians has declined by 10 percent. ARS reported that it needed 65 veterinarians in fiscal 2008, but employed 57 vets. The Army veterinary reserve corps reported a 12 percent shortage of staff in fiscal 2008. FDA said it believes it has enough veterinarians to complete its mission, but does not have established targets for staffing levels.

Faced with such demand, some agencies are poaching veterinarians from one other. FSIS officials said some of their veterinarians were going to work for APHIS, seeking higher salaries, more attractive working conditions, and opportunities for promotion. FSIS veterinarians who work in slaughterhouses, for example, reported having little time to participate in training that would help them advance their careers. APHIS confirmed to GAO that between fiscal 2003 and 2007, the agency hired 75 FSIS veterinarians, accounting for 17 percent of total new hires in that field.

Salary competition with the private sector is a challenge for all federal agencies that hire veterinarians, the report stated. Veterinarians with doctorates make annual median salaries of $130,000 working at colleges and universities, and those employed in industries, such as the pharmaceutical field, make annual median salaries of $198,000. Veterinarians at federal agencies such as FSIS and ARS earn significantly less money on average, according to OPM.

Incentives intended to make up for lower salaries are insufficient, GAO said. The 2003 National Veterinary Medical Services Act authorized the Agriculture secretary to implement a program to take on vets' education debt as an incentive. The GAO report said $1.8 million has been allocated through the program; the average veterinarian graduates with $106,000 in debt, so current funding would compensate only 17 candidates.

The shortage of veterinarians also affects state and local agencies, GAO said.

"To control a demanding outbreak of exotic Newcastle disease in poultry in California in 2003, APHIS had to borrow more than 1,000 veterinarians from federal and state agencies around the country, as well as the private sector," the report said. "This reduced the number of veterinarians available to respond to outbreaks of bovine tuberculosis in Michigan, monkey pox in Wisconsin, and West Nile virus in Colorado. Despite reports of insufficient veterinarian capacity during the four outbreaks, the agencies have not taken full advantage of two key opportunities to learn from past experience."

Some of the agencies discussed in the GAO report bristled at the suggestion that staff shortages indicated that they could not perform their mission.

The implication that understaffing at FSIS adversely affected food safety by stretching thin veterinarians working at slaughterhouses was inaccurate, said Bruce Knight, USDA's undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs.

"Although FSIS has not been able to hire as many veterinarians in some locations as would be ideal, work is prioritized to ensure food safety tasks are performed," he wrote in the agency's response to GAO.

Craig Burton, acting assistant secretary for legislation at the Health and Human Services Department, disagreed with GAO's premise that a shortage of veterinarians could slow the response to zoonotic diseases, which spread from animals to humans.

"CDC's [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] zoonotic outbreak response strategy is robust and is not limited to veterinarians, but also involves persons with other professional degrees," he wrote.