Mandy Nevel is the interim Head of Animal Health and Welfare at AHDB. Her career started by spending a year working on an outdoor pig unit before completing a degree in Animal Physiology and Nutrition at the University of Leeds. She followed this with her veterinary degree at the Royal Veterinary College and then spent four years in farm animal practice before completing her PhD in reproduction of the sow. Following a year in Canada as a post-doc worker in a human hospital combined with research on a pig unit, she returned to the UK to work for Pfizer, developing vaccines for farm animals. She then returned to the RVC to set up a farm animal pathology unit in 2003 and has continued her research into infectious diseases of pigs including PCV2 and Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae. She completed a secondment to AHDB in 2017 and took up a permanent position in 2018 as Veterinary Manager for the Pork team. In April 2019, she has been appointed the interim Head of Animal Health and Welfare, with oversight of pork and ruminant R&D.