11 Sept 2025
Dr Bladon also paid tribute to former association presidents Geoff Lane and Sandy Love, who both died this year.
Chris Simpson
Job Title
BEVA outgoing president Bruce Bladon.
Outgoing president Bruce Bladon delivered the opening address at BEVA Congress today (11 September), revealing the association – and the conference itself – are in a healthy position.
Speaking at the ICC in Birmingham, Dr Bladon unveiled some key statistics from his tenure.
He described association membership as “ultimately pretty stable,” with a 2% increase in membership on last year to 4,227 total members, of which 1,878 are regular members.
Affiliate membership, a programme in which members of overseas vet associations join BEVA, is up to 257, representing a 37% increase on 2024.
Dr Bladon added: “We’re seeing good growth of that. We have pushed it hard with visiting international meetings to encourage this programme.”
The president reflected on BEVA Congress, following the demise of BSAVA Congress earlier this year, noting: “Congress is financially stable, it’s hugely popular and its future is secure.”
He revealed that last year’s conference in Liverpool cost the association £629,000 and made £632,000 back, which he described as a “very impressive feat of budgeting”.
In terms of attendance, last year’s congress had 2,416 “delegate days”, a 5% increase on the association’s visit to Liverpool in 2017, and he noted that “earlier on, we were ahead of delegate registrations from last year at that stage”.
Noting the attendance demographics ranging from a vet who graduated in 1966 to a large number of recent graduates and students, Dr Bladon added: “Perhaps, more importantly, is we seem to be attracting delegates of all ages.”
He also noted the progress made by the MonitorME project launched earlier this year, which sees equine practices report their antibiotic usage.
Thanks to data submitted by 39 practices on 183,000 horses – around a quarter of the estimated UK population – he revealed the total antibiotic consumption in equine practice last year was 1.195 defined daily doses per year, compared with 6.42 defined daily doses administered in human medicine in England in 2023.
He also paid tribute to former BEVA presidents Geoff Lane and Sandy Love, who died earlier this year.
Dr Bladon described the pair as “absolute greats” and their deaths “a great loss to our profession, two really great men who have left us”.
