Introducing the editor of Veterinary Record Case Reports.

Alastair MacMillan writes: As a veterinary surgeon, let’s say in the second half of my career, I have wide-ranging experience in practice, research, government service, academia and in the charity sector. I have worked abroad quite extensively too, from Azerbaijan to Zanzibar, largely through my interest in brucellosis. After a spell in mixed practice, I started my career working at the Central Veterinary Laboratory, Weybridge (now AHVLA) at the height of brucellosis eradication in the days when government readily funded large disease control programmes. They were exciting times and the eradication campaign was a remarkable success, bringing the disease incidence down in cattle and consequently in people. Increasingly, I travelled abroad, working with brucellosis and other zoonoses in all farmed species in developed and developing countries. My interests expanded and in my Throughout this time, I also worked ‘out of hours’ in a local small animal practice, which kept me grounded and in-touch with the realities of private practice. Latterly, I was appointed chief veterinary officer of the RSPCA which included responsibility for the RSPCA’s veterinary hospitals and other veterinary services to the public. Occupying this role was certainly a most enlightening experience as it gave me exposure to the most common and the most important animal health and welfare issues facing us today. I am truly looking forward to editing this new journal as I believe that it opens up unprecedented opportunities for a much wider group of potential authors than have been served by traditional research-based publications.