Colleague Spotlight

Martin Perryman-Smith 

Purchase Supply Director

Martin graduated from the Royal Veterinary College in 2009, completing a degree in veterinary science and a postgraduate in veterinary medicine.

His first job was in a mixed practice in Leicester (Crescent Vets, now a CVS Practice) with a 50:50 mix of large to small animal workload. Having grown up on a dairy farm, early on Martin realised that he was more interested in farm practice.

After several years’ clinical work, Martin did an internship and specialised in monogastrics. This led to a role at the RVC working as a technical writer and developer of specialised pig and poultry postgraduate online modules. Working on course production was a turning point for Martin. It demonstrated that there were other ways in which a vet could contribute to an industry without being a clinician in the field.

In 2014 Martin took up a role at the pig levy board AHDB Pork as its senior veterinary manager, with responsibility for health and welfare initiatives across the pig sector. During this time, he helped to develop the first industry antibiotic reporting platform the electronic medicines book (eMB) to allow national reporting on antibiotic use in the pig sector.  In addition he co-ordinated the development of the British porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus (PEDV) contingency plans - one of the first industry-led, government-assisted disease strategies to be developed in the UK. 

Immediately prior to joining CVS Martin became the lead vet at British Quality Pigs (BQP) where he led a team of seven specialist pig vets. His role was largely office-based, managing the veterinary enterprise involving all aspects of pig health and welfare of the animals within the industry, and providing technical or managerial support to other departments as well as retail customers. 

Martin joined CVS in November 2022 as Purchasing Supply Director and Wholesale Qualified Person (WQP). Here he is responsible for the sourcing, development, stocking and supply of the MiPet range of ‘white label’ pharmaceuticals exclusive to CVS.  In addition, as WQP he has full responsibility for the compliance of supplying pharmaceuticals from Diss, ensuring that the product is stored, managed and supplied correctly within the legislation and that we are compliant on audit with the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD). He describes his role as a varied role, with a typical day covering everything from working with graphic designers, managing stock levels, doing internal audits or compiling technical reports. and gets great satisfaction from problem solving, especially if he can create a better solution to a problem than is currently in place.

Outside of work, aside from spending time with his wife Jo and his six, and four year old, sons Sam and Henry, Martin likes running, CrossFit and gardening.