The campus of NTU School of Veterinary Medicine sits in the heart of Taipei. As a result, whether it is for veterinarian training for agricultural animals, providing local services, or connecting with the livestock industry, the location of the campus greatly limits what teachers and students can do.
Yunlin is the major center of Taiwan’s livestock industry, especially pig farming. However, due to the lack of animal disease diagnostic centers in the local area, farmers and related industries have little choice but to turn to other counties and cities when animal-related issues arise, which can be a time-consuming and laborious process. In response to the needs of the farmers in Yunlin, NTU School of Veterinary Medicine has worked with the local government and related industries to establish the Animal Disease Diagnostic Center.
In 2019, the center was established in Chuhe Building on NTU’s Yunlin campus in Hu-wei. This was done to divide work with the main campus in Taipei and allowed NTU School of Veterinary Medicine to provide local on-site consultations and immediate, specialized diagnostic and treatment services.
Through our video, we hope to capture how faculty members and students from NTU School of Veterinary Medicine see Yunlin as a field of practice to collect samples, complete their internships, and reach out to local citizens in need. The Ministry of Education and Yunlin Animal Disease Control Center have been collaborating to support this project in hopes that more veterinarians will have the expertise and drive to dedicate their services to livestock-related industries, thus filling the lack of local medical resources and facilitating the robust growth of the Yunlin livestock industry.