Julie Cayzer is a CAT Graduate, vet and zoologist whose dissertation for her MSc in Sustainability and Behaviour Change explored the environmental harm caused by veterinary treatments for fleas and ticks. She went on to design a programme for vets to promote responsible use of these medicines.

Here’s Julie to tell us more:

“I am rolling out the training that I created in the dissertation to prevent further biodiversity loss by flea and tick products. As a vet, I hope to be a changemaker in the profession. A lifelong fascination with wildlife documentaries and the huge biodiversity loss in my lifetime inspired me to start the MSc. Every vet I contact is receptive to changing their own and their team’s behaviours. It inspires me to keep planning new ventures/ways of creating new approaches. 

I have had a portfolio career as a vet in many sectors over the last 30 years to uphold animal health and welfare. Beyond practice, I have worked for the government (including at the height of the BSE (“mad cow disease”) crisis, for the Royal Society of Biology and created training programmes to support vet and vet nurse development. I have always had volunteer roles across education (helping to create congresses for the vet profession, being a governor/Chair of Governors for our local secondary school). Supporting my colleagues’ wellbeing is one of my aims.  

Visiting the CAT site as a student (with my partner, now husband) in the early 1990s during a summer holiday started our sustainability journey. My husband now teaches Decarbonisation to Engineering Students at the University of Bath and leads the University’s Climate Action Framework. We have always aimed to make sustainable choices as a family and also been involved with local groups including those creating our Transition Town and Climate Emergency responses. I was also inspired by my two children, my daughter, as a climate striker, and my son, who wrote his MA on ethical chocolate consumption. Having spotted an advert in the New Internationalist magazine and feeling that I needed to develop my own voice within the sustainability field, led me to sign up for the MSc. 

I have met lots of amazing people at CAT over the last few years and across many different specialisms, which fills me with hope. The recommendation of one tutor was to complete the degree part-time to enable the meeting of more students and I am glad that I followed this advice. It also allowed more time to develop my ideas on where I could have the greatest impact both at work and beyond. I am now confident that I can be part of the solution needed to overcome the current climate and ecological crises. Completion of the MSc gave me the confidence to join the team of volunteers at Vet Sustain, who support sustainability within my own profession, and I now act as their Greener Veterinary Practice working group secretary. 

I have honed my communication skills and have a greater understanding of the politics and economics of the environment which will help me to make transformative change. I know that behaviour change, beyond the individual, at system level, will be key to enable more rapid changes to be brought about but it is all about starting the conversations, the personal connections that can make a difference. 

Rolling out the training to protect biodiversity through changing the use of harmful flea and tick products is my main aim at present. Their release into the wider environment, including water courses, is hugely damaging to ecosystems, a fact that the government has recently acknowledged through its Pharmaceuticals in the Environment group. I am working alongside new colleagues that I met during the dissertation, as it involved many focus groups and interviews allowing me to explore the concepts in depth and co-create solutions with them. The training programme that I created caused long-term and profound change in the end-user, practising vets’, behaviours in their use of the products and included discussing their use with their team and also their leaders.   

Through my studies at CAT, I found my sustainability voice and am using it to be a changemaker to protect biodiversity and create a sustainable future.” 

Read more about Julie’s research.