OPM has not conducted a government-wide effort to address current and future federal veterinarian shortages, and most of the 24 agencies that employ them reported concerns about the sufficiency of their workforces, GAO told the Senate federal workforce subcommittee recently.
That prompted OPM to issue direct-hire authority government-wide for veterinarian medical officer positions at the GS-701-11/15 grade levels nationwide in February.
GAO said USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service has not been fully staffed over the past decade, and that Health and the National Institutes of Health faces challenges recruiting veterinarians that specialize in laboratory animal medicine and pathology.
There is a growing national shortage of veterinarians and the situation could worsen as a large number of federal veterinarians become eligible to retire in the near future, according to GAO-09-424T.
It said for example, that 30 percent of USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) veterinarians will be eligible to retire by the end of fiscal year 2011 and noted that USDA component agencies already compete against one another for veterinarians instead of following a department-wide strategy to balance the needs of these agencies.
