CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) — Veterinarians at the University of Illinois get called several times a year to highway accidents in which livestock have been injured.
The News-Gazette reports that veterinarians were summoned to an accident Monday in which a semitrailer hauling pigs overturned as the driver exited Interstate 74. The incident was the first time the veterinarian response job fell to the university’s Dr. Ben Blair.
Blair’s role and those of other veterinarians responding to such accidents is to advocate for the animals by assessing them for injuries, overseeing the safe transfer of uninjured ones and euthanizing those badly hurt and suffering.
Blair says the outcome of the Monday accident was “pretty good” and that some pigs had to be euthanized at the scene “but the large majority were fine.”
