Veterinary education, present and future needs

It is a very great pleasure to be here today to deliver the Jubilee Veterinary Oration at this veterinary school, for whose staff and graduates I have a very great affection. I feel some empathy with Marc Antony whose words so well reflect my own feeling about my capacity for the task. “I am no orator as Brutus is but as you know me all a plain blunt man that love my friend” except that, in my case, the friend is the Veterinary Science Faculty, not Julius Caesar. Thomas McCaulay stated that “the object of oratory alone is not truth but persuasion”. Notwithstanding that discouraging assertion, it is my purpose today to endeavour to present the truth and let the facts speak for themselves…