Category:
Weekly Update
In veterinary school, I was among a handful of peers interested in pursuing nontraditional veterinary career paths. We often rallied our classmates to recognize the application of One Health frameworks in our future careers; we were trained in a unique profession in which we could become advocates for or experts in food safety, regulatory medicine, One Health, ecosystem health, and the human-animal bond even within the walls of a small animal clinical exam room.
Hennepin County Public Health and Minnesota Department of Health officials are investigating illnesses among Lake Minnetonka boaters who reportedly became sick following Fourth of July celebrations. Officials have responded to over 200 calls from individuals who reported vomiting and diarrhea after spending the holiday on the lake. At least half of these individuals spent time around Big Island and several sought treatment for dehydration.
Last month, a central Iowa man was charged with five counts of animal neglect in what the Animal Rescue League of Iowa called the worst animal hoarding case it has seen in over a decade. Authorities found 300 cats in the man’s home, nearly 200 of them dead, plus toxic air quality and six to 12 inches of feces covering almost every visible surface of the home.
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) will offer two free workshops later this month to explore mental health issues unique to farm youth and equip attendees with the tools to support rural families impacted by the financial and emotional stresses of farm life.
Letters were sent last week to over 16,000 Minnesota doctors, dentists, and other health care professionals who had prescribed opioids to at least one Medicaid or MinnesotaCare program patient in 2018. The letters let the prescribers know how many opioids they gave patients compared to their peers in terms of opioids prescribed.
The emergence of new genomic technologies such as CRISPR, which allows targeted gene editing to a level never before possible, and the recent successes of companies such as Impossible and Beyond Meat, which have pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable and possible in the marketplace and to the consumer, indicates food production and consumption could be in the midst of a revolution.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources confirmed on Friday that they had captured a bighead carp, two silver carp, and detected a third tagged silver carp over the past few weeks in the Misissippi River in the southern part of the state.
