International Pig Veterinary Symposium 2016

摘要

The pig veterinary community in Ireland is a small one. Only 20 or so vets are involved in clinical practice in the pig sector. Add to this those involved in industry and those involved in the laboratory service and the Department of Agriculture, Foodand the Marine (DAFM) centrally and you probably have 30 'pig vets' on the entire island. Because of this, the arrangement of continuing veterinary education (CVE) events is limited and most of those involved in the pig industry in Ireland would travelelsewhere to attend these events. The International Pig Veterinary Society (IPVS) is the largest event in the pig calendar, consisting of a conference every two years. I was a serial attendee of conferences in Iowa (2002), Hamburg (2004) and Copenhagen (2006). I missed the one in Melbourne in 2000 and the one in Durban in 2008. One thing that I always would have said after attending such an event was - "I wonder could we put on a similar show in Ireland?" Some time between the Durban event and the one toho holH in Usnmi ivor in 9H1 0 I maHo rnntart A/ith thoprofessional conference organising company (PCO), MCI, based in Dun Laoghaire. It was interested in underwriting conferences from a number of professional associations with a view to bringing them to Dublin. It had prior experience and success with the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA), hosted by Veterinary Ireland in Dublin in 2008. All they were looking for was interested associations that might be willing to put a bit of effort into securing a bid. I jumped at the opportunity and ourfirst outing was in Vancouver, where our opposition was from Cancun and Barcelona. The experience of making a bid and presenting to a general assembly was fabulous and, though we lost to Cancun marginally in the vote-off, all the heavy lifting in terms of bid preparation, budgeting, personnel and conference format had been done. We came home from Vancouver thinking that we would try once more to submit a bid in Jeju (South Korea) in 2012. The only difference in South Korea was that we only had four Irish delegates in attendance to assist with the bid here, whereas previously we had 15 Irish delegates in Vancouver, two years earlier.