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:

Or if you’d like you can download it here: Dr. Patrick Meeus Interview

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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:

Or if you’d like you can download it here: Dr. Merlyn Lucas Interview

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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:

Or if you’d like you can download it here: Dr. Jeff Watts Interview

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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:

Or if you’d like you can download it here: Pierre Bertrand Interview

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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:

Or if you’d like you can download it here: Dr. Cathy Knupp Interview

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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:

Or if you’d like you can download it here: Dr. Gordon Brumbaugh Interview

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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:

Or if you’d like you can download it here: Dr. Bill Baker Interview

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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:

Or if you’d like you can download it here: Dr. Dan Scruggs Interview

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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:

Or if you’d like you can download it here: Dave Korbelik Interview

Podcast: Play in new window | Download