Vets just look after sick animals. Right?
Sheila Voas
Tuesday, 9th March 2027
Eastgate Theatre, Peebles, 7.30 p.m.
The role of the veterinary surgeon can be wide and varied. As well as looking after sick animals in first opinion or referral practice, many vets also work in disease prevention, or for wider societal benefit, such as animal welfare, food safety or human health protection, or to facilitate trade in
animals and their products.
In this talk, Sheila Voas will share some of the things for which she is responsible as Chief Vet for Scotland, and as an (apolitical) advisor to the Scottish Government, including providing support regarding “herd level” disease control during the Covid outbreak, signing export health certificates for Tunnock’s caramel wafers destined for Saudi Arabia, importing pandas to Edinburgh Zoo and monitoring midge populations in Scotland, as well as the more obvious control of diseases such as Avian Influenza and Tuberculosis.
Sheila Voas qualified as a vet from the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies at Edinburgh University in 1988.
She has worked in mixed practice in Yorkshire, and then in the South of Scotland with Les Clerihew (now the Two Rivers Veterinary Practice) and regular locum work in Penicuik and Edinburgh, with a break to have two children (and work in preschool education). Sheila also worked for the government during the Foot & Mouth Disease outbreak in 2001 and joined the Scottish Government permanently in 2007 as a veterinary advisor in public health. She became Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer in 2010 and has been Chief Veterinary Officer for Scotland since 2011 – initially on an acting (stopgap) basis and then permanently since 2012.
Sheila has lived in Blyth Bridge since 1990 and shares a home with a husband, a horse, three cats and, currently, one grown up son.
