By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent
 
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last week, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) announced 62 money awards through its Veterinary Medicine Loan Repayment Program (VMLRP).

“Veterinarians face insurmountable student loan debt, and often struggle to repay the debt that they incur during their training,” said Roger Beachy, NIFA director. “Too often this leads them to make the choice of working in locations that may offer higher pay than in rural America. This is creating a shortage of adequate veterinary services for producers of agriculture animals in rural America. These awards will bring trained veterinarians back to rural areas to serve producers, improve the health of the livestock industry and ensure a safe food supply.”

Each offer of money will enable a recent veterinary medical school graduate to repay $25,000 of student loan debt a year, for three years. In exchange, the new veterinarian will work in a designated “shortage area” for at least three years. According to the American Veterinary Medical Assoc. (AVMA), there are 260 “shortage areas” across the country.

These shortage areas are generally made up of several counties, usually rural. Michigan has 28 counties with no food veterinarians, and eight counties with just one food veterinarian, said Mark Lutschaunig, director of the AVMA’s governmental relations division.
Another way of looking at it is there are 1,300 counties in the United States with less than one food animal veterinarian for every 25,000 food animals.

A number of studies have been conducted over the years that show there’s a shortage of food animal veterinarians, and that the problem is only going to get worse, said Gary Sherman, national program leader for veterinary science at NIFA, which is a part of the USDA.

“The marketplace will probably not correct the problem,” Sherman said.

He described the cost of obtaining veterinary medical training as a “heavy burden.” According to NIFA, the cost of such training can run between $100,000 and $140,000. The effect of this heavy burden, Sherman said, is to cause new veterinarians to avoid food animal medicine in favor of companion animal medicine, which tends to pay more.

“We’ve made a small dent in that shortage with the 62,” Sherman said. “It’s a dramatic success. A lot of people are very excited about this. Michigan did extremely well.”

The awards were given out based solely on merit, Sherman said. There was no mandate to distribute grants to all states. 34 states will fill at least one shortage area through the program. Iowa will fill five shortage areas. Idaho, Kansas and Texas will fill four shortage areas apiece. In addition to Michigan, Kentucky, Montana and South Dakota will fill three shortage areas each.

“There’s a need in practically every state,” said Gina Luke, an assistant director for governmental relations at the AVMA.

Areas in Michigan identified as shortage areas where a VMLRP grant was awarded include the entire Upper Peninsula, which has at least 10 counties that do not have a single food animal veterinarian; part of the northern Lower Peninsula comprising Emmet, Charlevoix, Antrim, Grand Traverse, Manistee, Leelenau, Benzie, Kalkaska, Wexford and Missaukee counties; and a third area in the northern lower comprising Cheboygan, Presque Isle, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Crawford, Oscoda, Alcona, Roscommon, Ogemaw and Iosco counties.

“We identified six areas. Really it’s the whole state,” said Steven Halstead, Michigan’s state veterinarian. “It’s a great recruiting tool for veterinarians wanting to hire other veterinarians into their practice. It’s been difficult to do recruiting for a lot of those practices.”

The legislation creating the loan program was actually passed in 2003, according to Luke, but it took several years for the regulations to be written, approved and finalized. Luke said there is nothing political to be inferred from the lag between passage of the legislation and the first round of grants.

“This is a very well supported program on both sides of the aisle,” Luke said.

Sherman said he hopes and expects that this is just the first round of awards and that the program will continue to be well funded next year.