"Past and future of veterinary science - concerning protection of consumers".

Concerning the causal chain,healthy animal - healthy food - healthy man" th ere's no doubt that mainly veterinarians are responsible for a safe preharv est area. In the food processing sector, of which economical importance is increasing in inverse proportion to agricultural activity of developed nati ons, the veterinarians must win through against many other professions. In this competition the specific veterinarian competence to prevent or to cont rol microbiological, parasitological and some chemical hazards should be us ed. Therefore scientific work in veterinary public health has to concentrat e on risk management. Additionally to developing methods for rapid and/or d iscriminative determination of causative agents the implementation of integ rated quality assurance systems is needed in future according to the spirit of "intelligent" food hygiene.