Animal Pharm Industry Excellence Awards

It's getting closer.

The excellence awards ceremony is less than a fortnight away and the preparations are now nearing the frantic stage.

Battles have been fought with venues, florists and caterers. Printers have been harrassed. Staging companies briefed and briefed again. Judges have been harried and nagged.

VIP and press invitations have gone out - admittedly a bit on the late side. Speeches are being written. Edited. And rewritten. Winners' names are being engraved on some rather striking awards.

And fingers are being tightly crossed that host Trude Mostue's flight from Norway won't be delayed or worse still cancelled.

It's been a long haul - twelve months of very hard work from a very dedicated team of people. And my goodness, it's an expensive exercise!

But on October 12th, barring unforseen acts of God, all this will come together into a night that the animal health industry can enjoy and be proud of - an evening designed to celebrate the spirit of innovation that drives the industry and reward those who have really excelled at what they do.

And then, finally, we hope and believe that it will all have been worthwhile.

Schering-Plough? Schering-Plough!

If you'd told me yesterday that Schering-Plough Animal Health (SPAH) would be the company chosen to tackle the USA's animal ID scheme, frankly I'd have been somewhat sceptical. I could have suggested a whole handful of more likely frontrunners, so the news that SPAH took line honours in this particular race did come as rather a surprise.

But really, why not? Tracking schemes have significant potential to evolve into tools for tracking and managing animal health. And of course, it's a subsidiary, Global Animal Management, rather than SPAH itself that's at the heart of the ID story.

Global Animal Management has been named as the first National Animal Identification System provider by the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The company will use its Animal Tracker program to feed data directly into the USDA's information system. This will allow producers who are already using the company's Tri-Merit age, process and source verification program to easily become members of the animal tracking part of the system.