Dr. James A. Burns of Mt. Horeb – 1982

Dr.  James A. Burns of Mt. Horeb – WVMA President 1982

James Burns, DVM

 Photo: From a photo of National Pet Week – 1982                                                        From Dr. James Burns personal file.

       The most significant accomplishment during my presidency was the establishment of a Liaison Group of Practicing Veterinarians of the WVMA.  That met with Dean Barney Easterday and Dr. Tass Duland of the School of Veterinary Medicine to establish communication and protocols to enhance the veterinary school during the early development of the school.  I believe the establishment of the school of veterinary medicine has and continues to be an enormous asset to the veterinary profession both in Wisconsin and nationally.  

       Another significant event was when I attended a special ceremony at the Wisconsin Capitol, Gov. Lee Sherman Dreyfus signed the proclamation proclaiming May 3 thru 5 as “National Pet Week.”   During this special week, we are trying to encourage recognition of pet ownership benefits and responsibilities.

       I graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1959 and practiced mainly in the area of dairy practice and, in later years, I got heavily involved with laboratory research animal care and production, mainly Beagles and hounds for research.

During my presidency

       I was president of the WVMA in 1982, but few changes in the WVMA were made during my term. We established the Animal Welfare Committee. We started the liaison with the University of Wisconsin Veterinary School at that time, the school was just under construction and just being finished up.

       The greatest challenge during my term was convincing the veterinarians from Wisconsin that creation of a veterinary school was a good thing for them.

        Everything else seemed to go along fairly smoothly. Our meetings were very effective and the committee chairmen were all very effective and of great assistance.

       An area of concern was public relations: the establishment good relationships with consumers, the legislature, and the media, and just beginning to realize the importance of that to the future of veterinary medicine in Wisconsin.

       One legislative issue at that time was there was a proposal to add sales tax for all

veterinary services. The resolution was that we ended up with having to pay sales tax on the products we purchased as an end-user, and we had to charge taxes on pet supplies and food, but we avoided having to tax our services. We avoided having to pay tax on the food animal medications.

       The executive board initiated the efforts for a couple of legislative ventures. One was to attempt to enact a veterinary lien law. This would give veterinarians some protection against losses, especially in the food animal practice where there were people going bankrupt or getting sold out by the bank; the veterinarians ended up with nothing. That law was never enacted. The second thing that we tried to do, was start a push for the incorporation of the embryo transfer activities into the Veterinary Practice Act. And that eventually did become part of the Practice Act.

       Nationally at that time, veterinarians feared the pending oversupply of veterinarians with all the veterinary schools that were coming into being. The second, from the practice standpoint, was canine parvovirus. It was a new and very perplexing dilemma that was facing many practitioners. We were just beginning to learn about that disease.

Executive board and continuing education meetings

       The board met quarterly at that time. We had two meetings associated with the annual meeting and also the summer meeting, and we had two other meetings midway between those.

       The annual meeting was held at the Hotel Pfister in Milwaukee in January. Our keynote speaker was Fred Young, an economist from Chicago. And I believe the title of his talk was “How Get Rich and Stay Rich.” I presided at the annual banquet. It was followed with dancing to the Steve Swedish Orchestra, which was a long-term, almost an established tradition at that winter meeting.

        The summer meeting was held in La Crosse and, at that meeting, we first had our first discussions about the cloning of cattle. That was one of the interesting parts of it.

Personal information

        I started in vet school at the encouragement of my grandfather. I was raised in a rural area by Richland Center and he lived on a farm. I worked with him a lot with his cattle and the encouraged me to go. When I was in high school, I became acquainted with both Dr. Sam Elmer and Dr. Virginia Bradford. Both of them tutored me and encouraged me to go to veterinary school.

       I remarried in 1979 and have three daughters, a stepdaughter, a stepson and three

grandchildren. We had a second stepdaughter who passed away five years ago.

      I moved to Mt. Horeb in 1968 and joined the Mt. Horeb Animal Hospital group which consisted Dr. Max Barth, Dr. Jim Jones, Dr. John Gribb. They had just established a Beagle colony for production of Beagles for medical research and so I was, therefore, involved in that. Over the last 29 years I have been working with it. For the last six years, I have solely managed that facility and worked with the dogs produced for research. The veterinarians that own it are Dr. Dave Williams, Dr. Jeff Ballmer, Dr. Ralph McGrew, and me. We produce about 4,000 Beagles a year. The Beagles are raised under very strict rules put down by the USDA. Most Beagles are used in toxicology for drug and chemical safety studies. We ship dogs all over the United States and Europe; about a third of our production goes to Japan, where they are used there for the toxicology work. We employ 17 people at the facility. Veterinarians serve as management and the board of directors.

Relationships with the new veterinary school

        It started at various meetings with Dr. Easterday and Dr. Dueland and revolved around the determining the correct protocols for referrals to the school, prices that they would be charging, and the various communications with the practitioners. We discussed future needs of the school. Nothing was given by the WVMA during my presidency, later on, there was a considerable amount of money contributed to the student lounges and libraries, etc. at the school.

       The controversy among veterinarians in Wisconsin in regard to the establishment of the veterinary school here in Madison was that they were going to be in direct competition with the practices in Madison. They were also going to be producing more veterinarians and add to the surplus that they perceived to be produced across the United States even at that time; it was going to be an economic downfall of the profession. However, the school went ahead and we did the best we could. Those that felt that it was to their detriment, I think, eventually believed that it was a big benefit to them.