This entails, for instance, that the veterinarian’s responsibility should include publicly addressing the underlying causes of the negative externalities of livestock farming. However, a One Health approach urges the veterinarian to look beyond the level of the individual animal and of disease symptoms.
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First, with regard to the point of professional responsibility, we claim that the veterinarian still remains primarily responsible for the health and welfare of animals. We argue that (a) a One Health approach has direct consequences for veterinary responsibilities and (b) a holistic approach on One Health is necessary to deal with moral problems that arise from this. In this article, we focus on the added value of the One Health paradigm in the debate on veterinary responsibilities in the context of public health threats from livestock farming.
Recently, this has even led to a proposal to stretch the concept towards ‘One Welfare’ (García Pinillos et al. Comparative or translational medicine and the positive effects of interaction with animals on the health of humans in hospitals, prisons or elderly homes, can all be covered under the One Health umbrella.
Up till now, ideas about One Health have been developed in the context of zoonotic diseases and beyond (Lerner and Berg 2015 Meijboom and Nieuwland 2018). One Health’s starting point is the awareness that the health of humans, animals and the environment are intertwined. In this view, especially veterinary and human medicine should cooperate to address health challenges at the human-animal-environmental interface. One Health can be defined as the collaborative effort of multiple disciplines - working locally, nationally, and globally - to attain optimal health for people, animals and our environment (American Veterinary Medical Association 2008). In this paper we assess the impact of the One Health concept on the professional responsibilities of veterinarians. However, in our opinion, the health of humans and animals should not be addressed separately and the One Health paradigm seems to confirm this. In this case, the order of words might suggest that human health is the primary concern of veterinarians. This motto reflects the veterinary profession’s responsibility for the health of both humans and animals. The motto of the Royal Veterinary Association of the Netherlands (RVAN) is: ‘hominem animalumque saluti’, which stands for: ‘to the health of humans and animals’. We elaborate this point by using a case study on the role of the veterinary profession in antimicrobial resistance policies in the Netherlands. This also holds for the responsibility of the veterinary profession: to serve public health, the central responsibility of veterinarians should be to be experts in animal health and welfare. We will argue for an ‘encapsulated health’ argument: the best way to safeguard human health is to promote the health of animals and the environment. To deal with such moral problems and to strengthen the veterinarian’s position, the starting point is a holistic perspective on One Health. For instance, how should veterinarians deal with situations in which measures to protect public health negatively affect animal health? This creates a conflict of professional responsibilities. However, applying a One Health approach also makes moral problems explicit. Especially in zoonotic disease control, the benefits of the cooperation between veterinarians and human doctors seem evident. The profession embraces this idea that the health of humans, animals and the environment is inextricably linked and supports the related call for transdisciplinary collaboration. Therefore, the concept of One Health is broadly promoted within veterinary medicine. In the last decades, food scandals and zoonotic disease outbreaks have shown how much animal and human health are entangled. They are professionally responsible for the health of farm animals to secure food safety and public health. Veterinarians play an essential role in the animal-based food chain.
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