April 2008               return to newsletter contents page

AVDA Announces Lifetime Achievement Awards

The AVDA board of directors is pleased to announce that the first recipients of the AVDA Lifetime Achievement Awards will be Dr. Bob Danielson of MWI Veterinary Supply and E. Thomas Corcoran of Fort Dodge Animal Health. The award winners will be recognized during the AVDA Annual Awards Banquet on Tuesday, April 29 at the AVDA Annual Conference being held in Tucson, Arizona.

Throughout his 43-year career in veterinary medicine, Dr. Bob Danielson, has made great contributions to the veterinary profession and industry. He graduated from Kansas State University with a degree as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in 1964. From 1964 through 1977, Dr. Danielson worked for Hoffmann LaRoche, where he played an instrumental role first in starting their animal health business, and then in Product Management, and Sales and Marketing Management. Ultimately, he was responsible for Roche’s animal health business unit.

From 1977 through 1990, Dr. Danielson ran Jones Veterinary Supply in Denver, Colorado, where he held the titles of General Manager and Director of Sales and Marketing. In 1990, MWI Veterinary acquired Jones Veterinary Supply, and Dr. Daneilson worked with MWI for 17 years prior to his retirement in January. He served as Branch Manager in Denver, Colorado; Director of Marketing and Senior Manager of Technical Services.

Dr. Danielson has been instrumental in several industry associations, including the Western Veterinary Conference, where he has served as a Director and President; Vedco, where he has served as a founder, President and Chairman; and the American Veterinary Distributors Association, where he has served as a Director, President and Chairman.

When E. Thomas Corcoran became president of Fort Dodge Animal Health in 1985, this little-known division of pharmaceutical company Wyeth was posting around $28 million in annual sales. More than 20 years later, Fort Dodge is now one of the top 10 animal health companies in the world and is on track to hit the billion dollar mark for the first time this year. Mr. Corcoran retired from Fort Dodge earlier this year.

Mr. Corcoran graduated from the University of South Alabama with a bachelor degree of science in marketing, and then pursued graduate studies at the University of South Florida and attended the Executive Management Program at Columbia University in New York. He began his career at Diamond Shamrock, now part of the US oil refiner Valero Energy Corporation. He spent 15 years there holding various sales and marketing positions before taking over as president of Fort Dodge in 1985.

Among the many products that Fort Dodge launched during Mr Corcoran's tenure, perhaps one of the most noteworthy is West Nile-Innovator. It is the first fully licensed vaccine to protect against equine West Nile Virus, a disease that has posed a serious threat to the equine industry in North America upon its emergence on the east coast of the US in the late 1990s. Mr Corcoran has directed several acquisitions by Fort Dodge, including the animal health businesses of Bristol-Myers, AH Robins, Syntex, Cyanamid, Solvay, and Parke-Davis.
In addition to his position as the head of Fort Dodge, Mr Corcoran was respected leader in the animal health industry and was recently the chairman of the Animal Health Institute, the US animal health industry association. During his term as chairman, Mr. Corcoran was very active in the Animal Drug User Fee Act of 2003, which enables the US Food and Drug Administration to collect user fees for certain types of animal drug applications and establishments to support the more efficient review of new animal drugs.

The AVDA board established the Lifetime Achievement Awards at their January 2008 board meeting and developed criteria and a list of possible candidates to be honored during the AVDA Annual Conference. AVDA’s Annual Supplier Awards Program honoring achievements among supplier members will be held at the 2009 Annual Conference.

Click here for the award criteria.