When Christine Hitesman sat down to write her exams at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon last week she was surrounded by women. Only 12 of the 69 students in her class were men.

Young, bright, and predominantly urban women are taking over the veterinary world. They make up almost 80% of the students at Canada's four veterinary colleges, a huge change from 25 years ago.

Women make excellent vets, but they tend to like their patients "small, warm and fuzzy," says Dr. Otto Radostits, professor emeritus at the University of Saskatchewan.

While there is nothing intrinsically wrong in having a preference for kittens over cattle, Radostits and others say the trend is precipitating a crisis that threatens the safety of the food chain.

Given the abundance of work in small animals, vets are also less inclined to return to school to specialize in the diseases that plague farm animals, and that sometimes can cross into humans, such as mad-cow disease and avian influenza.

"Many practitioners feel strongly that we need more men in the profession if we are going to continue to meet the needs of society," says Radostits, a vocal member of a national task force that has been studying the changing face of the profession. He believes there is a clear link between the dwindling number of male veterinarians and the growing shortage of vets specializing in the health and safety of chickens, cattle, swine and fish bound for the dinner table.

"In general, women do not want to do farm animal practice which is very physically demanding, can be very wet and dirty and muddy and frustrating for someone who was raised in the city and never had to do farm animal chores," says Radostits.

Others argue that women are not the problem. Today's graduating vets, whether male or female, are simply not as keen as their predecessors to go into small, rural practices where they often have to work weekends and evenings, and travel great distances to see an ailing cow or a sick herd of sheep.

"They are no longer willing to work 80 or 90 hours a week," says Dr. Duane Landals, incoming president of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association. "They want a more balanced life." And in an age of two-income families, more vets want to live where their spouses can get a job, which often rules out small farming communities.

The growing demand for vets to minister to pets is another factor drawing people away from farm and food animal practices. Pet owners will pay hundreds, and at times thousands, of dollars to keep their beloved companions alive. At least three times more vets in Canada
are now caring for small animals than large beasts.

Landals believes women are no less willing or able to work with large animals than their male counterpart, but he says the influx of women into veterinary practice is having an impact because women tend to take more time off and work part-time while they raise
families.

That, in itself, is not a problem as long as there are enough vets to fill in. But he says Canadian vet colleges have been chronically under-funded for years and have caps on the number of students allowed into their programs. The net effect is a shortage of working
vets.

Landals speaks from experience. His practice outside Edmonton has seven full-time positions for vets. Because so many of his staff take maternity leaves and time off, he needs as many as 12 vets to keep the practice running.

The shortage of large-animal specialists is already being felt by Dr. Gerald Ollis, Alberta's chief provincial veterinarian, who for more than a year has been trying to hire a pathologist to do post-mortems on everything from elk dying of chronic wasting disease to pigs.

There are many theories about why men are no longer flocking to vet school, but not much hard evidence to back up the speculation, says Dr. Jeanne Lofstedt, CVMA president and associate dean of the Atlantic Veterinary College on Prince Edward Island. Less than 20%
of the applicants to her college are male, says Dr. Lofstedt.

There have been suggestions that young men who grew up on farms and might be keen to spend their lives poking and prodding large animals cannot compete academically with the urban women with straight-A averages lining up to get into the schools. Others say there are plenty of capable men with good marks, but they are not applying.

One reason may be that men are more attracted to more lucrative professions. Vets spend about eight years in university. Salaries start at about $55,000 a year and rarely go above $100,000. Doctors and lawyers, who spend about as long in school, can make three or
four times as much.

Whatever the reason for the shortage of male vets and large-animal doctors, vets like Radostits see an urgent need for action.

Among the many options Radostits has suggested is a quota system that would guarantee half of the places in vet schools to men -- an idea many find unpalatable and few take seriously.

Lofstedt is not a big fan of enforced quotas, having trained in South Africa in the 1970s when women were only allotted 10% of the spots in vet schools. But she agrees the profession and vet schools need to be more proactive and promote the fact that there is more to veterinary medicine than caring for small animals.

Children often decide by the age of 10 what kind of vet they will become. "Enthusiastic role models can have an incredible impact," says Lofstedt. She would also like to see measures to improve the pay and lifestyle of vets willing to work with food animals or in
rural practices.

Landals believes vet colleges should be addressing the shortage of vets and take in more students. Radostits and others are pushing for streaming or career-tracking at the colleges to ensure more vets are trained to work with food animals. Given the concerns about
everything from antibiotic use on farms to catastrophic food-animal pandemics such as foot-and-mouth disease, they say vet colleges and governments must make a concerted effort to ensure there are enough vets available to deal with today's realities and threats.

There are already cracks in the system. Vet colleges are having trouble finding new professors to teach large animal medicine. Rural practices are withering away. The B.C. government has been unable to find a veterinary pathologist to work with fish farms, while Alberta needs animal pathologists. And both provincial and federal agencies are having trouble enticing young vets to work with animals bound for slaughterhouses and, ultimately, the dinner table.

"I don't want to use the word crisis, but if we don't do something constructive and reform veterinary medicine and education within 10 years, we'll not be serving the needs of society," says Radostits.

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