Around the world, people keep animals for a variety of reasons, depending on their political, religious, cultural, socio-economic status. As Veterinarians, our duty is to promote animal welfare, and to ensure that they are provided with basic living conditions and protected from unnecessary stress, pain, injury and suffering. Stress and poor health contribute to economic losses (reduced production, poor quality) and both humans and animals benefit from good animal welfare.
VetNEST is a network of Faculties of Veterinary Medicine from Vienna, Brno, Budapest, Kosice, Ljubljana, Wroclaw, Zagreb, Belgrade, Skopje and Tirana, supported by the CEEPUS program. The first VetNEST Summer School for Animal Welfare, Veterinary Ethics, Legislation and Communication Skills was successfully held from 21.07 (Monday) until 28.07.19 in Vienna, Austria. The purpose of this school is to emphasize the importance of knowing and applying animal welfare, veterinary ethics and legislation with a focus on productive systems (such as intensive and extensive and traditional way of farming).
The summer school was attended by 31 participants from VetNEST member countries, as well as from Australia and Sri Lanka. The lectures and workshops were led by seven lecturers: Animal Welfare – prof. Dr. Vlatko Ilievski and Miroslav Radeski (DVM) from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine – Skopje (Animal Welfare Center); Veterinary Ethics – prof. Dr. Cervig Grimm, Svenja Springer (DVM) and Dr. Christian Durnberger of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine – Vienna (Vetmeduni); Veterinary legislation – prof. Dr. Kresimir Severin from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine – Zagreb; Communication skills – prof. Dr. Metka Kuhar (Ljubljana).
Activities took place from 09:00 to 19:00. at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine – Vienna (Vetmeduni Vienna). During the workshops, the students were divided into teams, where they jointly approached different issues in terms of welfare, ethics, legislation and communication. Also, as part of the activities, a sheep farm was visited, where the participants had the opportunity to apply their acquired knowledge in practice.
We are pleased to announce that the next Summer School is going to take place in Ohrid, Republic of Macedonia.
You can see the link of the next Summer School website in advance
