Consortia and centers of excellence: issues and answers

As the demand for food-supply veterinarians changes, while the level of expertise necessary in this field markedly increases, there is a need to examine alternative modalities for delivering food-supply veterinary education. It seems clear that not all veterinary schools in the United States can sustain optimally sized facilities for the broad-based training in all species of food animals that the current and future food-supply veterinarian needs. An alternative model is for select schools to establish consortial centers of excellence in specific food-animal species, to which students from other schools can go for optimum final-year education. This alternative mode of food supply-veterinary medical education is discussed here.