During the recent Cattle Industry Convention, Pfizer Animal Health held it’s annual breakfast for the media.
Dr. Mike Nichols, Senior Veterinarian Pfizer Animal Health Veterinary Operations, was on hand to talk about how the company is helping veterinary students. A year ago they made a decision to support the veterinary profession by creating an externship program for students to encourage them to look at and choose a food animal practice and specifically bovine. They sponsored 78 first and second year veterinary students for the Bovine Externship Program who then spent 4 weeks at a local veterinary practice where they were mentored and received exposure to what the practice was like. He says they’re continuing the program this year and 78 selected students who will receive a $2,000 stipend and be matched with either practicing veterinarians or producers for a four-week field work experience.
You can learn more about the Pfizer Animal Health Bovine Externship Program by listening to my interview with Mike below:
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Pfizer Animal Health has announced today that it selected Bader Rutter, a full service agency based in Milwaukee, Wis. to service its U.S. cattle business. The agency will begin work on the account in January 2010.
In other recent news, Pfizer Animal Health unveiled a new look in October after its acquisition of Wyeth, including its subsidiary Fort Dodge Animal Health. The acquisition makes the company the, “world’s leader in the discovery, development, manufacture and sales of veterinary vaccines and medicines for livestock and companion animals.”
In a company press statement, Clint Lewis, president of U.S. Operations for Pfizer Animal Health said of the acquisition, “We’re extremely proud to offer our customers even more best-in-class and innovative products. The products, services and expertise we are gaining strengthen what is already a robust U.S. portfolio and will enhance our leading position in the animal health marketplace.”
Later this year, Pfizer is merging with Wyeth Pharmaceutical, which owns Fort Dodge Animal Health. After the merger, Boehringer Ingelheim will acquire some of the Ft. Dodge assets from Pfizer. That’s the short version.
According to the official announcement, Boehringer Ingelheim has entered into an agreement with Pfizer “to acquire certain assets of Wyeth Pharmaceutical’s Fort Dodge Animal Health business upon the closing of the global Pfizer-Wyeth merger, which is expected to occur early in the fourth quarter. The deal, which is subject to anti-trust clearance, significantly increases the size of Boehringer Ingelheim’s companion animal and cattle portfolios.”
If approved, the deal would clear the way for Boehringer Ingelheim to acquire a significant portion of the Fort Dodge product portfolio in several countries, as well as manufacturing and research facilities located in Fort Dodge, Iowa. In the U.S. and Canada Boehringer Ingelheim will own and market the pet and cattle vaccine lines as well as a wide range of pharmaceuticals for pets, cattle and other species. In Canada, several swine vaccines are also part of the package. In Australia, Boehringer Ingelheim will own and market the Fort Dodge pet vaccines and in some European countries and in South Africa, certain cattle vaccines.
At the Cattle Industry Convention I attended a Pfizer Animal Health breakfast and interviewed Dr. Dale Grotelueschen. In the picture he’s getting the same treatment from Evan Slack.
Dr. Grotelueschen was there to talk about a partnership between Pfizer and Michigan State University to eradicate BVD (that’s bovine viral diarrhea in case you don’t know). Basically, they’re starting with a regional area which is the upper peninsula in Michigan. It provides a relatively easy area to control for the project. This is a pretty significant disease which costs the cattle industry millions of dollars every year. Hopefully, if the project is successful it can be replicated in other areas.
You can listen to my interview with Dr. Grotelueschen here:
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This week you get to hear some of the good news about what our military is doing in Afghanistan. Like in Iraq, our fighting men and women have also engaged in projects to help re-build this country’s agricultural infrastructure. It sure is a different story than the one you’ll find on network television or read in the newspaper.
Thanks to Pfizer Animal Health, I got connected to Lieutenant Colonel Sam Barringer, DVM. He’s a U.S. Air Force Reservist who went on a mission to help reinvigorate animal agriculture in Afghanistan. Basically, his team trained local veterinarians, brought in and treated animals from areas of the country that still had livestock and helped family farmers establish themselves. The idea being to help these people become self-sufficient.
Dr. Barringer says that although it’s dangerous territory still, the people he met were friendly and truly appreciated the work he was doing. He says that he believes he could go back in 10 years and they would still welcome him into their homes.
In the picture you can see Dr. Barringer (right) training Afghan veterinarians on animal health assessment and prevention and treatment products. He says that extended therapy products are especially beneficial because these veterinarians travel great distances to treat an animal, then are unable to return for long periods of time, making repeat treatments extremely difficult.
This is a story that needs to be heard so I hope you’ll pass a link to it along to your friends. That is what this new media is all about you know.
I looked through the Podsafe Music Network for something about veterinarians or livestock but couldn’t find any so the program ends with a song called “Animal” by the Jeff Hightower. I hope you enjoy it and thank you for listening.
You can download and listen to the ZimmCast here: 
ZimmCast 148 (17 min MP3)
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I have never met someone who grows worms for a living but that’s what Dr. Patrick Meeus is doing for Pfizer Animal Health. He’s a parasitologist and specializes in worm research. So at the Pfizer VMRD facility he works on the development of de-wormers.
They call his part of the facility the “Worm Farm.” You can hear him tell how they do the research in my interview with him. He says they are constantly looking for the latest parasites in the field which they bring into the lab to do tests with. There are only about a half a dozen people working in his facility and they have a pretty tough schedule since as he puts it “worms don’t take a day off.”
You can listen to my interview with Dr. Meeus here:
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Dr. Merlyn Lucas is Associate Director, Pharmaceutical Clinical Development, VMRD for Pfizer Animal Health. At the recent Pfizer media event he spoke to us about some of his research that focused on single-dose therapy, specifically on Excede and Draxxin. These products are used to treat cattle for bovine respiratory disease.
He says that producers are starting to learn that these products have really changed their need to treat cattle frequently. In fact, the research he’s done makes it pretty clear that waiting to re-treat cattle after using these products is cost effective. Who doesn’t want to save some money?
You can listen to my interview with Dr. Lucas here:
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Dr. Jeff Watts is the associate research fellow, head, Laboratory Sciences, Microbiology Support Laboratory at the Veterinary Medicine Research and Development facility for Pfizer Animal Health. That’s a long title and he’s in charge of some pretty serious research. At the recent media event held at the VMRD he spoke about, “antimicrobial susceptibility testing of BRD pathogens.”
Wow. You may not think you will understand something that sounds that complex but you’d be wrong. He put what he does in easy to understand language which I needed when I interviewed him. First he reviews the type of research he’s done. To start with he focuses on their products and checking for resistance. Since Pfizer has several products to treat for BRD which have different modes of action he says the producer has choices which they can use if a resistance problem were to show up.
You can listen to my interview with Dr. Watts here:
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Last week Pfizer made two announcements involving their SelectVAC preconditioning program. Although he wasn’t at the media event I attended, Cindy got to interview Pierre Bertrand, Pfizer, Senior Marketing Manager for Bios and SelectVAC by phone.
He talks about the fact that Superior Livestock Auction has chosen SelectVAC as the preferred health program for calves sold through their auction and the second announcement which involves the American Angus Association. The organization, along with Pfizer Animal Health are announcing a marketing alliance for two premier feeder calf programs. The collaboration pairs AngusSource, an age-, source- and genetic-USDA Process Verified Program (PVP) for Angus-sired cattle, with SelectVAC, from Pfizer Animal Health.
Pierre says that Pfizer also announced a reward for the 3 millionth enrollment in the SelectVAC program. Pfizer will mark the milestone by awarding that producer with a year’s worth of free SelectVAC products for their entire herd (up to a maximum of $5,000 in value).
You can listen to Cindy’s interview with Pierre here:
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The head of Pfizer Animal Health’s Veterinary Medicine Research and Development facility (called the Farm) is Dr. Cathy Knupp. She was on our program at their media event titled “Delivering Solutions Through Research and Innovation.” I’m really learning a lot attending these type of R&D programs!
Dr. Knupp supervises global research and development activities for the company. Sounds like a big job to me. She welcomed us to their facilities and I interviewed her to learn more about the Farm. She says that it can take a decade for the whole discovery and development process to work to bring a new product to market.
The research headquarters in Kalamazoo is 2,100 acres and they’ve got 170 different programs in research right now.
You can listen to my interview with Dr. Knupp here:
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Speaking of Pfizer Animal Health . . . One of the people I met at their media event at the veterinary medicine research and development farm was Bill Loveland. Bill manages their research dairy.
Pfizer has a state of the art dairy facility that allows them to handle up to 128 animals at a time. Bill says the facility opened in 2004 and since then they’ve pretty much been in continuous study mode doing about 35 studies on topics like mastitis, reformulations and residues. He says most of the studies last from 2 to 4 months and that he’s got a regular staff of 4 people although they bring in more if needed. He’s really proud of their work in transitional cow studies.
I interviewed Bill at the end of our tour of the facility and you can listen to that interview here:
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How many companies allow journalists to go behind the scenes and see the whole process of how a product is conceived and brought to market? Not many but that’s what Pfizer Animal Health did last week. I attended their “Delivering Solutions Through Research and Innovation” media event to which they invited cattle publication editors like Holly Martin, High Plains Journal and Bob Strong, Feedlot Magazine, who you’ll hear from in this week’s program.
The coordinator for our event was Raegan Weber, Pfizer Marketing Communications Manager (pictured). Raegan was very helpful and agreed to let me do an interview while we were on tour to discuss why Pfizer did this and what they hoped to gain by it. I think you’ll be interested to hear her perspective and especially what it takes to make an event like this happen. As you can imagine security was a major concern and I think Pfizer handled it very well.
I believe this event helped me understand the company much better and definitely taught me a lot about a serious animal health problem that Pfizer has invested significantly in creating producer solutions for. Holly and Bob agreed and you’ll hear them say that they’re coming away from the event not only with material for a story but a perspective that will help them write about the subject and the company in a much more informed way.
I want to thank Raegan and everyone at Pfizer Animal Health for inviting me along. Thanks also to Kenna Rathai and Lacy Carroll at Martin Williams for all their assistance too.
The program ends with music from the Podsafe Music Network and Brobdingnagian Bards. The song is “Health To The Company.”
You can download and listen to the ZimmCast here: ZimmCast 132 (22 min MP3)
Or listen to this week’s ZimmCast right now:
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One of the Pfizer Animal Health specialists we met this week at their media event in Kalamazoo was Dr. Gordon Brumbaugh. He’s an anti-infective specialist in their Cattle-Specialty Veterinary Operations.
The theme of his talk was a “Paradigm Shift.” Basically he wants to challenge producers to think in new ways now that there are products on the market that work very differently than even just a few short years ago. The examples used were products like Excede and Draxxin which stay in the animal’s tissue much longer offering longer protection for bovine respiratory disease. Instead of treating every 3 days producers now need to wait longer and let the animal recover without costly extra treatments that may be unnecessary.
He likened the change in animal health product technology to telephones saying we don’t use the same phones today we did 50 years ago and we should apply that same thinking to how we treat animals.
You can listen to my interview with Dr. Brumbaugh here:
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The executive director for Pfizer Animal Health’s Global Clinical Development is Dr. Bill Baker. He’s responsible for managing the staff and budgets for this group of 120 individuals.
At the media event this week he gave us an overview of Pfizer’s Veterinary Medicine Research and Development which is the research organization that has 700 staff in total. He says that Pfizer Animal Health is unique in the industry due to the level of investment the company puts annually into R&D. He says they invest 50% more than their closest competitor.
You can listen to my interview with Dr. Baker here:
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Day two of the Pfizer Animal Health Media Event started out in a serious rain storm. I sure wish we’d had some of this back home.
Here’s most of our group getting ready to board the buses this morning to go to our first stop. We went to the Pfizer Global Manufacturing Site to see where they make products and package, label and crate them up for shipment. This was a big building. I mean big. The main corridor that runs through it is 1/4 mile long for example. Let’s just say we worked up an appetite for lunch.
This building doesn’t have windows and is a very controlled environment as you might imagine. The employees are only allowed to bring a family member in for a couple hours on one evening of the year. The rest of the time it’s tight security. We had to put on gowns, hair nets, safety glasses, booties and for those with mustache/beard, a beard net. And that wasn’t the highest level of contaminations protection for many areas we didn’t get to go into.
The amount of investment in a facility like this is really hard to comprehend until you see the fully automated lines where they take the product and bottle or otherwise package it for shipment. One of the things I was impressed with is how they use the same level of control and safety precautions on all products regardless of whether they’re for human or animal use.
Here’s the guy who really showed us the way when it comes to BRD in cattle today at the Pfizer Animal Health VMRD facilities. He’s Dr. Dan Scruggs and his topic was the whole BRD complex. I know more about diseases I couldn’t pronounce before today than I’ve got time to write about tonight. Let’s just say there are a number causes for bovine respiratory disease and Pfizer has some relatively new products to treat them with
Dr. Scruggs says timing of treatment is the key to success. He was one of the wet lab leaders after his talk. By wet lab I mean we went into a very wet lab and looked at recent necropsy’s of calves that had very diseased lungs so we could see first hand the effect of the diseases. I really think it was the best way to understand how much impact these diseases have and how much damage they can do in a short period of time.
You can listen to my interview with Dr. Scruggs here:
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The Pfizer Animal Health marketing manager for Draxxin is Dave Korbelik. He was our emcee today and introduced our speakers while also contributing some interesting information about Pfizer products.
I got to talk to him at supper time and asked him to tell us more about their products which are used to treat bovine respiratory illness since that’s what we focused on today and that’s his product focus.
Dave says that when Draxxin came to market the amount of research and documentation it had was unprecedented but that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped doing research on it. He says products like this have brought about a paradigm shift in thinking in the industry for treating BRD.
You can listen to my interview with Dave here:
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Here’s our group of agricultural journalists at rapt attention today at the Pfizer Animal Health Veterinary Medicine Research and Development facilities. Although we sat in a meeting room most of the day we did get a break to go into a wet lab. Tomorrow its a tour around the farm as described below.
The region’s facilities serve as the global headquarters for Pfizer VMRD and include 2,100 acres of land in Richland, Mich., and a global manufacturing plant in Portage, Mich. The company employs 275 veterinarians in five sites across the globe: Kalamazoo, Mich.; Lincoln, Neb.; Thane, India; Sandwich, United Kingdom; and Melbourne, Australia. In 2006, Pfizer invested nearly $270 million in research and development, which was $90 million more than any other animal health company that year.
“Our Veterinary Medicine Research and Development group is passionate about discovering, developing and enhancing innovative products and programs that create value for our customers,” said Don Sauder, vice president of U.S. Cattle Operations. “Many of our products have revolutionized food animal production, including the recent introduction of extended therapy products, which keep cattle healthier and contribute to beef and dairy producers’ profitability.”
Thanks to Pfizer staff for supplying photos since we couldn’t bring our cameras inside due to security concerns.
Wow. What a day. Talk about getting to know more about a company and their products. That’s what we got to do at Pfizer Animal Health VMRD Headquarters today. Before heading out there we did have our news conference here at Brook Lodge where we’re staying.
The rest of the day involved a lot of presentations and a wet lab experience which I’ll tell you more about later.
I personally think these types of events are a very positive experience for both us as ag journalists and for companies like Pfizer who hold them. We learned more today than probably 10 trade show booth visits. There are a lot of people to thank but I’ll start with Raegan Weber at Pfizer Animal Health and Kenna Rathai at Martin Williams.
I’ll get more into what we learned soon but I just have to tell you how beautiful this place is. I want to stay for about a week.
I know there’s a lot of history to it which I’d like to have the time to learn. We had a great outside dinner outside the Doctor’s Cottage pictured here. Here’s what the website says about the place. “The historical evolution of the estate is a remarkable story as its origins date back to Dr. W. E. Upjohn, founder of the Upjohn Company. Dr. Will, as he was known, bought a forty-acre farm in 1895. One of the original buildings on the property was a creamery, which he soon converted to a summer cottage for himself and his family.”
Right now Don Sauder, Pfizer Animal Health, VP, U.S. Cattle Operations is speaking about two new announcements involving the Pfizer SelectVAC preconditioning program. I’m going to interview him as soon as we break and post that later.
The first announcement is that Superior Livestock Auction has chosen SelectVAC as the preferred health program for calves sold through their auction. According to the announcement the partnership creates a new level of preconditioning that both organizations believe will help cow-calf producers get more value for their calves.
The second announcement involves the American Angus Association. The organization, along with Pfizer Animal Health are announcing a marketing alliance for two premier feeder calf programs. The collaboration pairs AngusSource, an age-, source- and genetic-USDA Process Verified Program (PVP) for Angus-sired cattle, with SelectVAC, from Pfizer Animal Health. According to the announcement more than 132,000 calves have been enrolled in AngusSource, nearly 51,000 in the first half of 2007.
More than 2.5 million calves have been enrolled in SelectVAC through its three flexible programs, PreVAC, WeanVAC and StockerVAC. Pfizer also announced today a reward for the 3 millionth enrollment in the program. Pfizer will mark the milestone by awarding that producer with a year’s worth of free SelectVAC products for their entire herd (up to a maximum of $5,000 in value). Calves must be enrolled in SelectVAC online to qualify, so visit SelectVAC.com for more information.
Post Update: Here’s my interview with Don Sauder right after this morning’s announcements:
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It's time to thank our farmers and ranchers for all their hard work to feed us.
