“New doors will always open”: Nathaniel Tablante retires after 27 years at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine

After 27 years at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, Nathaniel Tablante has retired. He served as associate director of the Center for Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine, professor, and poultry veterinarian with University of Maryland Extension.

"Affectionately known as 'Chicken Man,' a moniker he uses with a smile, his good sense of humor made working with him enjoyable," said Valerie Ragan, professor and director of the Center for Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine. "His unique and varied experiences as a veterinarian are a great example of the breadth of opportunities in veterinary medicine. We appreciate his contributions and wish him well in this next chapter."

Tablante’s story involves moving between countries, hopping between industries, and even serving in a congressman’s office.

"If your first career choice doesn't work out, don't be discouraged or disappointed — there will be new opportunities, and new doors will always open. Eventually, you will find your niche as I did,” said Tablante. 

Tablante’s love of animals started at a young age growing up in Los Baños, a town in the Philippines that sits under a dormant volcano and is known for its hot springs.

"When I was a young kid, I was the first one to go to church every day — and on my way home, I'd pick up stray cats and nurse them back to health. I've always had this love of animals,” said Tablante.

He graduated from the University of the Philippines's College of Veterinary Medicine in 1976, and though his career would later center around poultry medicine, Tablante focused on bovines during his first decade as a veterinarian. This wasn’t necessarily by choice — as a new graduate with no specialty training, the only job he could find was with the University of the Philippines’ Dairy Training and Research Institute.

Here, he provided veterinary service and advice to small-scale dairy farmers, most of whom were rice farmers who milked their water buffalo for additional income. He even had a small radio program to discuss dairy health problems. 

When his father died, he moved to a suburb of Manila to help his mother. He got a job at the Central Bank of the Philippines' Department of Rural Banks, where he provided service and advice to farmers so that their backyard livestock and poultry operations could thrive and they could repay their loans.

Spurred by civil unrest in the Philippines, Tablante traveled to the United States in 1984 to study preventive veterinary medicine. He entered a one-year program at the University of California, Davis, and then began an internship with the University of Idaho.

The internship did not begin as Tablante expected. Because veterinary training in the Philippines isn't the same as in the United States, Tablante didn’t have the hands-on clinical skills that were expected of him — he was being asked to teach fourth-year veterinary students topics he himself was just learning. Additionally, Idaho was much colder than the Philippines, and some clients were not friendly to people of color.

After rocky beginnings, Tablante developed more confidence and skills working under Professor Stuart Lincoln. 

"He taught me something good, and it wasn't just surgery — it was dealing with cowboys and other people!" said Tablante.

Tablante learned more than surgery and communication skills during his time at the University of Idaho: he learned he wasn’t passionate about bovine medicine. After three years in the United States, Tablante hit another challenge.

"When I returned to the Philippines, there was no job available except in the poultry industry. I knew nothing about chickens other than to eat them.”

Once again, Tablante had to hit the ground running and learn on the job. While working as a veterinarian at San Miguel Corporation, he applied the population health and epidemiology skills he learned to poultry medicine. During this time, he also met his wife, and the two had a child. 

Soon, it was time to change gears again. Tablante secured a visa to immigrate to Canada, and in 1992, he, his wife, and their 1-year-old daughter moved from the tropical Philippines to much colder Canada. Tablante completed a master’s degree at the University of Guelph, followed by board certification in poultry medicine, which allowed him to practice poultry medicine in Ontario under a limited license.

He worked as a poultry veterinarian for Maple Leaf Foods until he found a job ad that piqued his interest. The position was for a poultry Extension veterinarian in Maryland, and the rest is history.

Tablante and his family moved to Maryland in 1997 so Tablante could begin his new career. He first worked in Salisbury, Maryland, and soon moved to College Park.

Tablante’s position focused on Extension work with some teaching and research. As part of Extension, he worked with poultry producers large and small to ensure the health of their animals. This often meant tackling a serious threat: avian influenza. 

For example, in 2002, a huge outbreak of the disease affected about 300 poultry flocks in Virginia over a period of six months. One major problem was that the poultry companies had no good disposal method for the dead birds. Burying the carcasses contaminated the groundwater, burning them created smoke that drifted into residential areas, and when they tried to take the carcasses to a landfill, virus particles spread as the trucks drove hundreds of miles to the appropriate facility.

Working with Bill Pierson, emeritus professor of biosecurity and infection control and clinical specialist in poultry health at the college, and Extension colleagues from the University of Maryland and the University of Delaware, Tablante and his team developed a method of in-house composting to dispose of the carcasses using litter (a combination of bedding and droppings) as a carbon source. The heat generated by the composting process killed the virus, and the end product was fertilizer that could be used for other purposes. This method is still used today.

Thanks to grants from the USDA, Tablante has worked on biosecurity videos that educate farmers on avian influenza prevention, biosecurity compliance audits, and risk-based planning to improve response to avian influenza. He has also traveled to Russia to conduct biosecurity and poultry pathology training and to Ukraine as part of a USAID project to prevent avian influenza outbreaks.

Tablante served as the American Association of Avian Pathologists’ representative to the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST). 

"That's where I learned all about policymaking, because CAST distills these high-tech volumes of scientific literature and turns them into common-sense language and provides that information to policymakers, legislators, media, and the public,” Tablante said. He later served as the president of CAST from 2011-2012.

From 2013 to 2014, Tablante served as an American Veterinary Medical Association Congressional Fellow, working with Sanford Bishop, the U.S. representative for Georgia's 2nd congressional district.

"The reason I was matched with him is because his district has a big poultry industry. I became a policy advisor for agriculture and poultry policy issues,” Tablante explained. In addition to agriculture, Tablante was also assigned to Native American issues and grants.

During his time as a Congressional Fellow, he hosted and spoke to countless groups and even served as policy advisor to Bishop during several hearings held by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture. 

There are two accomplishments from that year that stand out the most for Tablante. First, he helped push along funding for a $550 million facility renovation for the USDA Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia. This facility better equips researchers to study the eradication and control of avian influenza and other diseases that threaten poultry health and food systems.

With the help of the National Park Service liaison, Tablante helped Congressman Bishop’s legislative staff prepare a draft proposing that the Ocmulgee Mounds National Monument be designated as a National Historical Park. Located in Macon, Georgia, the Ocmulgee Mounds are ceremonial and burial mounds constructed by a native group called the Mississippians before 1000 A.D. Several years and several iterations later, the bill was signed into law in 2019, increasing the size of the park and preserving more land for future generations.

Though his teaching appointment is relatively small, Tablante has remained actively involved in teaching. He developed a course on animal health policy as a result of his experience as a Congressional Fellow and he also developed an honors course in catastrophic disease outbreaks.

“Dr. Tablante uses his expertise in poultry medicine and love of teaching to train students and support Extension work in topics ranging from poultry health to food security to emerging infectious disease,” said Cassidy Rist, associate director of the Center for Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine and associate professor of practice. “Over the years he has inspired undergraduate students into careers in veterinary medicine through his work on admissions counseling and has expanded veterinary student awareness of the various career pathways available in research and federal service by organizing the Washington, D.C., activities that are a cornerstone of the VMCVM summer research program."   

When the Center for Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine moved from the University of Maryland to the Virginia Tech campus in 2014, Tablante became associate director of the center, overseeing its presence at the College Park, Maryland, campus.

After a 27-year-career at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, Tablante said, "I'm not done yet. I'll be around!"

He will continue to volunteer with his church and in the community.

"I care about people — not just animals, but people,” he said. “That's just how I was raised.”