title: Consortia and centers of excellence: issues and answers.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: University of Illinois, Urbana 61802, USA. gymiller@uiuc.edu
authors.forename: Gay Y
authors.initials: GY
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.forename: Keith W
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Prasse
mesh_terms: D000068:Accreditation; D000818:Animals; D004520:Education, Veterinary / Q000379:methods / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005523:Food Supply; D006801:Humans; D018634:Veterinarians / Q000600:supply & distribution*; D014730:Veterinary Medicine / Q000592:standards*; D000078329:Workforce