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.