Royal Veterinary College appoints to Animal Health Economics post
7 April 2009
Animal health economist Dr Jonathan Rushton has been appointed to the post of Senior Lecturer in Animal Health Economics at the Royal Veterinary College – the first such post in a veterinary faculty in the UK.
He joins the College ’s Veterinary Epidemiology and Public Health Group after a period as an animal health economist at the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome, where he worked for its programme for the control of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), first in Egypt and then with global responsibilities for the socio-economic activities of HPAI. Before that, he was the managing director of a consultancy firm in Bolivia that focused on animal health research in Latin America, the UK, Asia and Africa. It was also in Bolivia that he worked as a livestock economist for a Department for International Development project. He holds a PhD from the University of Reading and the MAgSci, also from Reading. He grew up on a dairy farm on the Lancashire edge of the Pennines and went on to study Natural Sciences at Cambridge, specialising in animal nutrition and production.
His current research includes HPAI control (working with the International Livestock Research Institute); the use of value chain analysis in HPAI risk assessment; and the control of salmonella in pigs (working with the University of Liverpool). He is also working on the drivers of poultry sector development, and on how both people’s behaviour and the power of companies within the poultry supply chain can influence risk within this sector.
”The RVC currently has a world-leading epidemiology group, and I am very pleased to be working alongside people whose work I have respected for a long time,” said Jonathan. ”The College’s willingness to have a significant role in tackling some of the national and international animal health issues also attracted me.
“Animal health economics is a specialism whose significance continues to grow and emphasises the need to recognise the importance of people. There is a growing realisation that it is the attitudes and behaviours of people that influence disease risk and disease spread, and that having healthy animals, be they pets, food or wild animals improves people’s welfare, through giving people pleasure, income or healthy and plentiful food. Where disease is not being particularly well managed or contained, for example avian influenza in some areas of the world, many of the veterinary establishments are gearing up to the challenges in this area that they face – and I think the UK animal health organisations have a strong role to play in this process.”
Notes for editors
- The Royal Veterinary College is the UK's first and largest veterinary school and a constituent College of the University of London. In the recent Research Assessment Exercise the RVC ranked as England’s best school in the Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Science unit of assessment, for institutions whose research is exclusively veterinary related, with 55% of its submitted academics viewed as producing ’world class’ and ’internationally excellent’ research. The College provides support for veterinary and related professions through its three referral hospitals, diagnostic services and continuing professional development courses. www.rvc.ac.uk
Further Information
To request further information or an interview please contact Lucinda Roberts or Zoisa Pugh, RVC Press Office on 01235 433 098 (or 07947 230 372 out of hours). Alternatively email rvc@mistral-pr.co.uk.