Veterinary Diagnostic Lab regains full accreditation

Capping a six-year effort to correct a series of deficiencies identified in 1998 by a professional accreditation committee, the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (WVDL) has regained its full accreditation status, according to the chair of the board that oversees the lab.

B.J. Cadman, chair of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory board and a practicing veterinarian in Ridgeland, Wis., says the lab was informed of its reaccreditation last week by the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians. The reaccreditation, Cadman says, is essential to ensuring that Wisconsin’s agricultural community and food producers have direct access to the best animal health diagnostic services available.

“This is a pretty significant step, and is something our board has been working on for a long time,” Cadman says.

The lab is a key part of the state’s animal health infrastructure. It provides testing and diagnostic services for all types of animals, especially farm animals. In recent years, it has assumed a very visible role in the state’s battle against chronic wasting disease, testing more than 35,000 animals for the disease last year alone. In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States and the subsequent anthrax attacks, it has also assumed new responsibilities in the effort to thwart bioterrorism.

The lab, which for many years was a part of the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection – and was known as the Wisconsin Animal Health Laboratory – had been under funded and understaffed, and lacked effective leadership, according to a history of the lab.

In 1998, when the lab’s accreditation was reduced to “provisional” status, it “brought to a head some of the budgetary and administrative challenges which our laboratory had dealt with for the past 15 to 20 years,” Cadman says.

In 2000, with renewed support from the state legislature, the lab was transferred to the University of Wisconsin System and renamed the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory. It works in active collaboration with the UW–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine and the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to provide field services, consultation and education to farmers and others.

The state has also committed $24.9 million for the construction of a new veterinary diagnostic laboratory adjacent to the School of Veterinary Medicine on the UW–Madison campus. The new lab is expected to be completed in 2006.

Cadman credited the renewed commitment of the state, and the efforts of the lab’s staff and its director, Robert Shull, for upgrading the lab and enabling its return to full national accreditation.

“We are indebted to Dr. Shull and the excellent staff of the lab for rising to these various challenges,” Cadman says. “Given the outside challenges of CWD and bioterrorism, they’ve performed a remarkable feat and are becoming one of the leading veterinary diagnostic laboratories in the nation.”