About

Jamie has had a life long interest in animals and the natural world. From a very young age he wanted to become a veterinarian and help those who could not speak for themselves. He finally was able to pursue that dream when he was accepted into the Ontario Veterinary College in 2009. During his studies he pursued a mixed animal stream, which gave him knowledge and experience treating small (dogs and cats) and large animals (cows, goats, sheep and horses). After graduation he entered clinical practice but after 4 years he was drawn back to his passion of large animal epidemiology/population medicine. He investigated Johne’s disease control in dairy cattle under the guidance of Dr. David Kelton in the Department of Population Medicine at the Ontario Veterinary College. Johne’s disease is a chronic and progressive diarrhea disease of cattle that is not treatable by antibiotics or deworming. It is caused by a bacterium called Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis.

His thesis focuses on changes in disease prevalence as described by pooled milk sampling techniques, as well as the ways management programs address the disease (mainly through risk assessment). He is also interested in machine learning and is currently learning how to incorporate machine learning algorithms to help predict Johne’s risk. Jamie successfully defended his thesis on November 23, 2022.

Jamie has joined the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) as a veterinary science specialist where his portfolio covers the national animal surveillance systems for the prion diseases CWD, Scrapie, and BSE.

In his “spare time” he enjoys cooking, brewing beer, and spending time with his pets. He is also a big nerd when it comes to fermentation: beer and sourdough bread are a couple of the things he enjoys making.