The Ontario Agricultural College’s department of animal and poultry science has hatched a new name meant to better take in the scope of its work.
The new name, the Department of Animal Biosciences, “helps describe the department’s evolution from a livestock husbandry department in the 1870s to the highly dynamic and integrated department it is today,” OAC dean Rob Gordon said in a release Monday.
University of Guelph president Franco Vaccarino approved the renaming and notified the university senate last week, the school said.
“After a long consultation period with our staff, students, faculty and alumni, I am so pleased to see the department renamed,” department chair Jim Squires said in the same release.
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Several “internal and external audiences” don’t realize the department works in genetics, physiology, welfare and behaviour, animal models for health, animal metabolism, reproduction, nutrition, equine management, animal care and the social and environmental impacts of both livestock and companion animals, he said.
Squires and department staff, faculty and students “feel the new name will better communicate the department’s mandate to others,” the university said.
Communications and documents are to be updated accordingly over the next few months. — AGCanada.com Network
