Background
The UK veterinary profession has made great progress and achieved excellence
in delivering a world class veterinary service of which we can all be genuinely
proud.

However, the veterinary work place in general has changed little as it
continues to cling on to unsustainable traditions, considering the veterinary
working life as a 24/7 vocation rather than a modern Profession, for example.
This is compounded by other factors like: constantly increasing demands for
greater professional competencies; ever-rising client expectations; fear of
complaints, disciplinary procedures and litigation; and the pressures of greater
profit-making in a fast-expanding corporate environment. As a result, the
veterinary work place has become a place of anxiety, stress and poor reward,
leading to high levels of mental health problems and suicides in our profession.
Moreover, the veterinary profession has been subject to a range of very
significant changes and regulations in the recent decades in the formulation of
which the grassroots veterinary professionals had little or no effective
influence. Many of such changes and regulatory provisions, for example the
corporatisation of the profession and the Cascade system continue to remain
controversial.
There was no recognised union with a legal right to represent veterinary
professionals and to protect their interests, like the British Medical
Association – the doctors’ trade union. Therefore, such a union needed to be
created.
The BVU was therefore established with the exclusive objective of
safeguarding the interests and welfare of veterinary surgeons, veterinary
nurses, the allied staff working within the UK veterinary profession and to
support veterinary students and veterinary nurse students in UK universities and
other institutions.
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