The role of the veterinary doctors is essential to the animal health and, “consequently, to the public health” and to the development of the “economy of the Azores”.

The idea was expressed by the regional director for Agrarian Development, on Thursday in the night in Angra do Heroísmo, in the welcome session to the participants in the 47th Spanish-Portuguese Vet Meeting, in which he represented the regional secretary for Agriculture and Forestry.

According to Joaquim Pires, the nearly 120 professionals of the area who work in public or private services in the Region are responsible, in great part, “for the quality and credibility of the farming products of the Azores”.

Referring to the meeting of Portuguese and Spanish specialists of the specialty that this year takes place in the Azores, the regional director recognized the added value that the meeting represents for the two countries and for the Region, namely as part of the European regulations that, "more and more", demands common proceedings to all the Member-States.

In the two days’ meeting in Terceira Island, nearly two ten of Iberian veterinary doctors, accompanied by the general-directors of Veterinary of the two countries, and with the participation of technicians of the specialty of the Azores, deepened subjects connected with ancient and new challenges of the animal health.

Among the subjects in discussion, there are the “bluetongue” disease in bovines, an illness that worries the people in charge at world-wide level, as well as several brucellosis almost completely eradicated in the Azores, tuberculoses and salmonellas, in special in the birds, a recently expressed preoccupation in the directions of the European Community.

In the welcome session the investigator Álvaro Monjardino was the speaker, who spoke about several aspects of the History of the Azores, showing to the Congressmen that the first "colonists" of the archipelago were cattle herds, put in the islands to explore the dense bush and to guarantee the subsistence to the colonists who would come next to occupy the recently discovered lands.