University of Florida to Offer Veterinary Forensics Training

BY JAMES M. LEWIS
Your DVM Career MANAGING EDITOR

GAINESVILLE. FLA. - Students in the University of Florida's College of Veterinary Medicine with an interest in solving crimes against animals soon will find themselves in perhaps the nation's best location to learn that emerging aspect of veterinary medicine.

The university and the American Sobiety for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) partnered to launch early in 2010 the first veterinary forensics medicine program at a major university.

The ASPCA's senior director of veterinary forensics, Dr. Melinda D. Merck, recently moved from Atlanta to Gainesville to help set up the program, teach classes and investigate abuse cases, bringing the ASPCA's Animal Crime Scene Investigation Unit with her. It contains forensic equipment and a surgical suite to care for injured animals.

ASPCA is funding the program with a gift of $450,000 - $150,000 per year for three years.

"There's already plenty of interest in this program," Merck tells DVM Newsmagazine. "Julie Levy (DVM, PhD), who directs the Maddie's Shelter Medicine program at UF, is seeing that interest. Much of what we will teach is part of shelter medicine. But thiS really affects all aspects of veterinary medicine, including large animals. Veterinarians need to know how to recognize and document the evidence of animal cruelty that they are seeing, or that students will see when they graduate and go into practice."

The Maddie's program offers courses for UF veterinary students in shelter medicine, veterinary forensics and disaster response.

There are multiple aspects to the new forensics program, Merck explains. By next spring, she expects the first online education module to launch. The program eventually will offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses and continuing education for veterinarians, law-enforcement personnel, animal-control officers, "Virtually everyone with an interest in this field," she says. "The online modules will make it possible to reach many more people and provide credentials for those who can't get to Florida to receive this instruction in person"

The program, in which students will be trained in much the same way that crime-scene investigators in police work are trained, will be housed at UF's William R. Maples Center for Forensic Medicine, where Bruce Goldberger, PhD, is director and is working with Merck.

"This is a newly emerging field," Goldberger says. "Students here are in the best position in the world to take advantage of this kind of education. The certification program can lead to a master's program in time, and eventually a formal degree in veterinary forensic medicine. That will be open to veterinarians or anyone with a B.S. degree, Or, vets can receive continuing-education credit, and veterinary technicians can expand their studies and gain more certification."

Courses to be offered likely will include forensic entomology, bloodstain pattern analysis, buried-remains excavation, bite-mark analysis, crimescene processing and animal forensic osteology (the study of bones and bone fragments obtained at crime scenes), Merck says, explaining that "skeletal evidence often is key in determining the cause of death" of animals.

In the case of former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, who recently completed a 23-month prison sentence for bankrolling a dogfighting ring in Virginia, Merck analyzed bones from mass graves to show that some animals were hanged, beaten or thrown to the ground. Vick had admitted helping kill six to eight Pit Bull dogs that did not perform well in fights.

"Florida has more forensic anthropologists than just about anywhere," Merck says. "I was working with some of them already when we envisioned this program. I should stress that our prime goal here will be to advance veterinary science wherever it needs to go. And the support we've had from forensic scientists on the human side is phenomenal."

Training will occur in classroom settings. online and through a recently formed International Veterinary Forensic Sciences Association. The latter arose from a conference the university and the ASPCA organized last year on the application of forensic medicine to animal-cruelty cases, at which only a few dozen attendees were expected but nearly 200 from across the United States and nine other countries showed up.

Classroom training may indude mock trials in which students would play the defendants in animal~crue1ty cases, with real prosecutors and media professionals taking part.

But students shouldn't think that their training in forensic medicine will always lead to high-profile cases or mirror those seen on television CSI depictions of human crime-solving. "It's actually a much more timeconsuming, tedious and expensive process," Goldberger says. "I've been a forensic toxicologist for 25 years and seen only a few somewhat highprofile cases. And one like the Vick case comes along very rarely."

The ASPCA handles more than 5,000 animal-cruelty cases a year, in which some 300 or more people are arrested. The UF program will handle some of the ASPCA cases from around the country, possibly up to 200 within the first two years.

"Having access to the advanced forensic capabilities of the University of Florida will greatly enhance the fight against animal abuse," says Dr. Randall Lockwood, ASPCA senior vice president for anti-cruelty field services, in a news release.

"We hope the program will help advance veterinary forensic science on an international scale, and we look forward to working toward that goal," says Ed Sayres, the group's president and CEO.