September 15, 2025
Dr. Pat Gorden, professor of veterinary diagnostic and production animal medicine, has been named the 2025 recipient of the Zoetis Distinguished Service Award from the American Association of Bovine Practitioners (AABP). The award was presented at the AABP’s annual meeting in Omaha last weekend.
In addition to serving as a faculty member in the College of Veterinary Medicine, Gorden is the director of the Food Supply Veterinary program in the Department of Veterinary Diagnostics and Production Animal Medicine including the college’s Veterinary Field Services unit. Prior to joining the Iowa State faculty, Gorden worked as a practitioner for the Platteville (Wisconsin) Veterinary Clinic and for Dairy Veterinary Services, a full-service dairy practice in Chandler, Arizona.
A faculty member since 2007, Gorden has documented success in competitive grantsmanship securing nearly $3.8 million in funding as a principal investigator from a mix of industry, biopharmaceutical, state, and federal sources. He has also served as a co-investigator on projects totaling over $12 million in funded grants.
His research has ranged from improving antibiotic stewardship in dairy cows and goats to assure food safety and milk quality to the development of drugs for analytical methods to detect and quantify tulathromycin in caprine liver.
This past year, Gorden has been active in research focusing on the high pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak in dairy cattle throughout the United States. He recently received a USDA grant for a variety of projects that will look to understand disease dynamics of this acute outbreak; to investigate the economics of the outbreak in dairy herds; monitoring disease incidence in cattle that were pregnant during the outbreak; and a longitudinal study that will monitor cattle in herds infected by HPAI.
Gorden is the author of 59 peer-reviewed manuscripts on a variety of topics and is frequently invited to speak at international, national and regional scientific and producer meetings.
Gorden earned his DVM and PhD from Iowa State and is a Diplomate in the American College of Veterinary Clinical Pharmacology and the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners. He is a past president of the American Association of Bovine Practitioners.
The Zoetis Distinguished Service Award is given annually to an individual who, through long and continued service, has promoted the goal of the AABP and whose accomplishments have served as a model for service to bovine agriculture through organized veterinary medicine.