[The veterinarian active in the field of veterinary public health, towards the year 2000].

Introductory classes taught to seventeen successive generations of postgraduate veterinary students, intensive consultations, during about 40 years, with scientists in executive positions in the food industry, catering and military-medical organisations, and the response of participants after public lectures support the impression that, in the Netherlands, the public is not aware of the professional profile of the Public Health Veterinarian. This contrasts sharply to that of the small animal practitioner and of the herd management veterinarian. In the years immediately before the Second World War the professional standing of the Veterinary Public Health Officer was demonstrably better observable. The reason for this altered public image of the Public Health Veterinarian is sought in changes in the aetiology and transmission of zoonoses and other diseases spread by food, water and the environment. Whereas the majority of the latter was previously transmitted off intra vitam foci of infection, food-borne infections and intoxications presently mainly originate from the environment. Consequently adequate protection of the consumer has to rely on the elaboration and application of measures of intervention sensu Wilson. These include: well designed techniques of hygiene supported by disinfection at the farm and during transportation and holding animals for slaughter, use of probiotics in decontaminated animal feeds, meticulous adherence to expertly designed measures of hygiene and chilling at slaughter houses and, to the extent required, terminal decontamination of carcasses and/or consumer size cuts. Many of these facets do not traditionally belong to the veterinarian's vistas.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)