“The most difficult operation has always been in administration and politics.”

Before becoming a veterinarian, Liviu Harbuz wanted to become an actor. He studied directing and acting at the Popular School of Arts in Piatra Neamț, performed in Ion Băieșu’s play The Ghost Tamer, also known as Masquerade, and won first place nationally at the Student Arts and Creativity Festival. Paradoxically, after this achievement, he was proposed for expulsion from university. He was supported by Professor Miclăuș, his surgery professor, who told him: “You have the hands of a surgeon. Leave theater behind.” From that moment on, Liviu Harbuz chose the scalpel. The stage, however, never disappeared from his life: it moved to the microphone, the Parliament podium, and television cameras. Early on, he understood that saving a life does not only mean performing surgery, but also convincing, educating, and changing the way people relate to the world around them.

“I entered politics after succeeding in my profession, not the other way around.”

In 1991, in a Romania that still did not understand what private veterinary medicine meant, the same young doctor from Piatra Neamț opened the country’s first private veterinary clinic in Cotroceni. There was no market. There were no protocols. There were only the scalpel, courage, and the conviction that animals deserved care at the same standards found anywhere else in the world. His associate, Ștefan Miclăuș, the son of the professor who had once supported him, stood by him through everything that followed. Salvavet, the company founded back then, still exists today, with an annual turnover of 14 million euros. Through his surgeon’s hands passed roosters, fish, iguanas, snakes, lions, tigers, and bears. More than 40,000 animals. Each with its own story. Each with its own chance at life.

Starting in 1994, as a director within Bucharest City Hall, he managed the issue of stray dogs and laid the foundations of an animal population control system based on European principles. The notoriety he gained there, together with his 13 years behind the microphone at Europa FM with the show Friends Without Words, where 500,000 Romanians listened to him every Saturday morning, turned him into the most well-known veterinarian in Romania. Not through titles. Through credibility.

Liviu Harbuz understood that animal protection and food safety cannot exist without functional institutions and without a system built on clear rules. This understanding led, in the early 2000s, to the creation of the National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority – ANSVSA. The institution was built from scratch during the pre-accession period, through the drafting of approximately 600 legislative acts and through weekly negotiations and trips to Brussels, in a context where Romania had to close major administrative and legislative gaps within a very short time. During this period, the national animal identification system was also implemented, a mandatory condition for accessing European subsidies, completed within two years. As State Secretary within the Ministry of Agriculture, Liviu Harbuz coordinated the administration of 4 billion euros in European funds directed toward infrastructure necessary for food processing and food safety. As a Member of Parliament and Vice-President of the Agriculture Committee in the Chamber of Deputies, he initiated 124 legislative projects, including the Milk Law and the Beekeeping Law. He also served as advisor to three Romanian Prime Ministers, and when he was asked to support a legislative project that he considered incompatible with the principles of his profession and with the protection of public health, he chose to leave the political party of which he had been a member for 21 years.

“If I had passed that law, I would have betrayed my profession and all my work in veterinary medicine over the past 40 years.”

His concern for animal protection long ago exceeded the national framework. As Romania Director of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, Liviu Harbuz became actively involved in promoting the protection of wild animals at European level, contributing to the legislative framework that led to the ban on the use of wild animals in Romanian circuses. He is part of the management of the Libearty Bear Sanctuary in Zărnești, considered the largest brown bear sanctuary in the world, spanning 69 hectares of forest and dedicated to the recovery of bears rescued from abusive captivity. His activity also included international specializations, among them a training program at Lionsrock Big Cat Sanctuary in South Africa, dedicated to the management of sanctuaries for large felines rescued from European circuses. He permanently represented Romania within the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe, served as a Food and Agriculture Organization expert for food security, and was a speaker at meetings organized by the European Food Safety Authority, the European Commission, and international conferences held in Baltimore and Rio de Janeiro. In October 2025, he represented Romania in the European Parliament during debates dedicated to wildlife trafficking.

“The hardest thing is changing mentalities.”

President of the Romanian College of Veterinarians for two consecutive mandates, an institution established by royal decree in 1939, and today First Vice-President of the same organization, Liviu Harbuz has remained consistently involved in defending and modernizing the veterinary profession. His professional and public activity includes the production of three media programs, the publication of 42 scientific papers, more than 480 articles, and two specialized volumes. In 2026, he launched the podcast Vagabonds and Aristocrats, continuing to use public dialogue and communication as instruments through which he can contribute to education, the profession, and society.

“Without private practice veterinarians, the authority will never achieve its objectives.”

Today, Romania has a veterinary sanitary system recognized at European level. It has traceability from fork to fork — from the producer’s farm to the plate in the restaurant. It has legislation built from a clear vision, a profession organized according to international standards, and people who continue what he built and alongside whom he still stands today. Some people leave behind titles and functions. Doctor Liviu Harbuz leaves behind saved lives, safe food on Romanians’ tables, institutions, laws, and generations of professionals trained within a system that he built and continues to support.

When asked how he would like to be remembered, he answered without hesitation:

“Doctor Liviu Harbuz. Simple. No one can take that away.”