Chief Veterinary Officer
Ministry of Economic Affairs Netherlands

Christianne Bruschke graduated in 1991 as veterinarian and started working in a mixed private practice in the north of the Netherlands. In 1993 she joined the Virology department of the Central Veterinary Institute in Lelystad where she did a PhD on pestivirology and led the laboratory for bovine virology from 1994 onwards. After the classical swine fever outbreak in the Netherlands she was seconded for a year to the Inspection Service for Livestock and Meat to support the updating of the Dutch contingency plans. A year later she returned to Lelystad as head of the Unit for  Notifiable Diseases and two years later she became Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases. In 2005 she joined the Ministry of Agriculture and was seconded to the OIE where she led the global Avian Influenza Programme. In 2008 she returned to The Hague as Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer and since 2010 she has been the Chief Veterinary Officer of The Netherlands.  She is the primary adviser to the Minister of Agriculture on all veterinary and veterinary public health issues.