Veterinary Services Division Protecting Health

Food safety is paramount to the health of the nation, and the Veterinary Services Division (VSD), in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, plays a significant role to ensure this is achieved. The VSD is responsible for the administration of animal health programmes, veterinary certification of animals and animal products.

Chief Veterinary Officer at the VSD, Dr. Osbil Watson, tells JIS News that the Division does disease monitoring, surveillance, prevention, control and eradication. “Part of that also involves animal identification and traceability, which would enhance all the activities that we do from animal production and food safety, to disease monitoring and surveillance control and eradication. We pretty much are there to be the safeguards, the gatekeepers in terms of keeping exotic animal diseases and diseases that can affect humans out of Jamaica as much as possible,” he says.

“Safeguarding the livestock sub sector, enhancing animal welfare, facilitating trade, that’s a lot of what we do. Also, improving the general public health and enhancing food safety,” Dr. Watson adds.

With offices across the island, the VSD team comprises Animal Health Professionals, including Veterinarians, Animal health Technicians, Artificial Insemination Technicians, Lab Experts, Veterinary Medical Technologists and Veterinary Biochemical Analysts.

“We also operate laboratory and quarantine services, facilitate import/export processes, we also have a field operation service which deals with a lot of disease surveillance activities. We also administer the National Animal Identification and Traceability System (NAITS),” Dr. Watson notes.

“There is also the Veterinary Epidemiology Public Health and Food Safety Unit that deals with the whole gamut of disease surveillance and food safety in relation to the safety of foods of animal origin for human consumption. We also work in conjunction with the Ministry of Health and other agencies that have responsibility to safeguard the health of the public,” he notes. For import/export facilitation, the VSD operates a permit and licensing office that issues or rejects import permits to individuals and companies importing animal products or live animals.
The division also uses different methodologies to ensure the quick diagnosis of any potential disease that an animal might be suffering from, and also in terms of contamination of animal products.

“Our range of analyses goes from residue to biochemical analysis, where we do analysis for antibiotic residue in food [in the form of ] hormones. We also export a lot of fish products to the EU and some of what we do in the laboratory, we use to facilitate the export of conch. We have to test for what are known as marine bio-toxins, which can be toxic if present in any amount in the meat of the conch,” Dr. Watson says. The division’s laboratories also test for heavy metals, including lead, cadmium and mercury as well as the analysis of milk meat and other products to monitor contaminant levels . “[We test to ensure] that any level of contaminant is within the Maximum Residue Limits (MRLs) allowable for international standards. Our laboratories and our methods that we use, most of them now are accredited to lab accreditation ISO 17025. This gives our partners the confidence to say the VSD can ensure that when we do a laboratory test on a product, the test results can stand up to scrutiny anywhere across the globe,” Dr. Watson tells JIS News. In addition to being the authority helping to secure animal health for enhanced food safety the Division also works to secure animal health for pets. For instance, in 2017, the Division was at the fore of the expansion of the number of countries from which Jamaica can safely import pets.

“Since then we have a lot of Jamaicans and visitors actually utilising the facility and are able to move with their friendly pets which they regard as a part of their family. The important thing is that the new system we have in place allows you to walk off the plane with the dog, and once you provide the certification that we require that dog will not go into quarantine, it will go straight home with you as a part of your family,” Dr. Watson says. Jamaica has not had many incidents of fatal or aggressive zoonotic diseases, and Dr. Watson says deadly viral diseases, like rabies, have not been seen in Jamaica. “There are several countries that are having problems with rabies in pets and other animals. Most of the countries around Jamaica have problems with rabies and we are fortunate that because of the government’s stringent procedures and measures that we have in place, we remain safe,” he notes. The effort at monitoring and safeguarding the environment forms part of what Dr. Watson describes as the ‘One Health’ approach. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines this concept as a collaborative, multi-sectoral and transdisciplinary approach – working at the local, regional, national and global levels – with the goal of achieving optimal health outcomes. This is done through recognising the interconnection between people, animals, plants and their shared environment. “It is known that a large percentage of infectious diseases are of animal origin. Perhaps over 60 per cent of infectious diseases are of animal origin. For example, COVID-19 and SARS, Dengue, Malaria, Ebola, Avian Influenza and Zika…a lot of them can be traced back to animals and not just animals that are perhaps domesticated, but you have the practice of persons going into the wild (to hunt wild animals,” he says.

“So, the idea of safeguarding the health of all rests directly on our Veterinarians, Medical Doctors, Environmentalists, Animal Technicians, Public Health Inspectors, Academia and all persons that have a role to play in ensuring that our environment is safe,” Dr. Watson adds. To learn more about how the VSD plays its part in the maintenance of healthy animals, the environment and human health, persons can visit: moa.gov.jm or call 876-977-2489.