Butch Baker Named 2013 NHF Master of the Pork Industry

May 22, 2013 — 

The National Hog Farmer Magazine has named Rodney “Butch” Baker, DVM a 2013 Master of the Pork Industry. He joins fellow masters Robert Thaler, Jeff Hansen, Bradley Wolter, Jim Meimann and Malcolm DeKryger.

Baker serves as a senior clinician and holds the Dr. David R. Trask Professorship in Entrepreneurial Studies in the Veterinary Diagnostic & Production Animal Medicine Department in the ISU College of Veterinary Medicine.

In his teaching appointment, he assists fellow swine veterinarians, Locke Karriker and Alex Ramirez, in the swine medicine rotation, also giving lectures on a variety of subjects in other veterinary medicine courses.

He and Ramirez teach a livestock disease prevention class in the Animal Science Department, which is a pre-vet class that Baker started.

The class has grown simply by word of mouth. The goal is to teach pre-vet students many of the principles about animal agriculture, including pharmacology, vaccines, antibiotics, specific species health concerns and current health and welfare issues.

Last October, Baker was appointed to serve as interim director of the Iowa Pork Industry Center. He has agreed to serve in that capacity until June 2014, when he turns 67 years old. Baker served as AAS President in 2009 and describes his experience with AASV as “one of the most motivating” in his career.

He has also become actively involved in research on some of the most devastating diseases affecting the swine industry including PRRS and Swine Influenza.

To learn more about Dr. Baker, visit the article in National Hog Farmer.