Animal Health Officer – Scotland

Job Description

Are you passionate about working with animals and care for their welfare?

Are you caring, conscientious and an excellent team worker?

Do you enjoy working outside?

If the answer is ‘yes’, you should come and work for APHA!

APHA is a brilliant place to work where our people feel valued, have a voice and can be their authentic selves. We value difference and diversity, because it helps us be more innovative and make better decisions.

We are dedicated to being an inclusive employer, offering equitable opportunities for allindividuals. Our goal is to build a diverse workforce, and we hope to attract applications from all backgrounds and under represented groups.

Locations

We have four permanent vacancies based at the following locations: Dumfries/Stranraer, Inverness, Thurso and Ayr

We have one Fixed Term Appointment with a current end date of 15 August 2025 based at thefollowing location: Hamilton

All posts will be offered in merit order based on location and business need. If permanent vacancies are not available in your preferred location, we may offer you a fixed-term appointment in merit order based on your location preference.

Working as part of Technical Team, you will be instrumental in helping to safeguard animal health and welfare. Through engaging with inspections, surveillance and collecting samples, you will be contributing to the control and eradication of disease to protect both the economy and food security.

We are looking for compassionate, dedicated individuals who strive for excellence and integrity and who put animal health and welfare at the heart of everything they do.

You will be nominally aligned within a delivery area, which will have a designated APHA office.During certain circumstances (e.g., national disease outbreaks) there will be requests to work ondetached duty elsewhere, depending on business need. These requests may be made at short notice. The post holder may be occasionally required to work from other locations in the delivery area.

You will be expected to occasionally stay away from home on overnight stays to attend meetings and training. Staff will also be required to work rostered on-call duties, weekends, Bank Holidays and occasional evenings. There will be occasional travel to other APHA locations. Out of hours and detached duty work may be required in the event of an outbreak or incident.

Job Description

As a field-based Animal Health Officer (AHO) your duties will include, but not limited to the following:

• Blood sampling of livestock species including cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry (after suitable training).

• Collecting blood samples from BTB breakdown cattle herds, including suckler, beef and dairy herds.

• Conduct documentation inspections on animal identification, animal movement, breeding, medicine and other written or electronic records for audit and disease control and surveillance purposes.

• Collect samples for National Surveillance Schemes including feed samples from farms,feed mills and feed merchants.

• Collect samples and information for disease surveys.

• Manage compliance inspections for premises handling animal by-products e.g., rendering plants, composting sites, hunt kennels and knackers’ yards.

• Play an active part in contingency planning so the agency is able to respond to outbreaks of exotic notifiable disease and other emergencies.

• Undertake allocated rostered out of hours on-call duties to deal with incidents and to support disease outbreak reports.

• During outbreaks of notifiable disease, participate as directed to contribute to the controland the eradication of the disease including taking part in rosters for detached duty toother parts of Great Britain.

• Working with a diverse team, both locally and across Great Britain, including other technical colleagues, veterinary surgeons and scientists during notifiable disease outbreaks.

Support and Training

All successful candidates will be provided with an extensive programme of training and supportas part of their induction into working with APHA.

APHA appreciates the varying level of experiences and skills successful candidates will hold onjoining the agency. Training material is designed to ensure all new entrants, to APHA, buildsuitable confidence and competencies to deliver the work.

Person Specification

We are looking for candidates with the following essential experience and skills:

• Have an agricultural background, an agricultural qualification or have knowledge of the agricultural industry.

• Have high standards of written and spoken English and can communicate effectively about animal health topics with all stakeholders including customers, service users and colleagues.

• Have knowledge of basic Health and Safety and an understanding of safe working on farms and with livestock and poultry.

• Are able to work alone or as part of team, to take responsibility and remain positive and focused in the face of challenge.

• Have experience with excellent record keeping, auditing processes and maintaining quality.

Closing date: 13 January 2024.

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