The department of Preventive Veterinary Medicine of CVM was founded by Professor Luo Qingsheng, one of the founders of modern veterinary education in China, and was awarded the honor of the national key discipline, and authority of conferring doctoral degree and master's degree. A series of research institutes affiliated to the discipline of preventive veterinary medicine are the International Animal Health Organization Reference Laboratory for Streptococcus suis, the Key Laboratory of Animal Bacteriology of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Animal Immunology Laboratory of Jiangsu Province. The discipline consists of the subjects of veterinary microbiology and immunology, animal infectious disease, and animal parasitology. For a long time, the department has focused on leading the subject development and the social demand for animal husbandry and veterinary medicine in China. The faculty members have managed to refine and define research orientations and expanded the research content, establishing six special postgraduate orientations: molecular virus and immunology, pathogen and host interaction, animal infectious disease pathogenesis and immunity, veterinary microbial pathogenesis and immunity, veterinary parasite molecular immunology, and veterinary public health. In these orientations, a series of basic research results have been obtained in the fields of viruses, bacteria, and infectious immunity of livestock and poultry. A series of vaccines have been developed, such as the Streptococcus suis vaccine, the attenuated porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome vaccine, and the porcine circovirus inactivated vaccine, all of which are significant contributions to animal disease prevention and control, veterinary clinical diagnosis and treatment, and healthy production of livestock and poultry.

Working in the department are 44 faculty members, including 19 professors, 12 associate professors and senior experimenters, and 8 lecturers and experimenters, 5 other assistants. There are two innovation teams headed by national agricultural scientific research outstanding talents. One professor has been honored as the Jiangsu Province "333" Engineering academic talent (second level), one professor as special professor by the Jiangsu Provincial Government, one as the talent of the National Fund for Excellent Youth Project, four as the new century outstanding academic talents of the Ministry of Education, and three teachers as the academic rookies of the Nanjing Agricultural University Zhongshan Program. The professors instruct in a series of major undergraduate courses, such as Veterinary Microbiology, Veterinary Immunology, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Parasitology, Veterinary Biological Products, Animal Food Hygiene, Veterinary Epidemiology, Animal Microbiology, Aquatic Microbiology, Animal Protection, and postgraduate courses, such as Modern Animal Immunology, Principles and Methods of Genetic Engineering, and Modern Vaccinology. The department owns one preventive veterinary undergraduate teaching and experiment center and 15 undergraduate practice bases, one OIE Reference Laboratory for Streptococcus suis, one Key Laboratory of Animal Bacteriology of the Ministry of Agriculture (formerly known as the Key Laboratory of Diagnosis and Immunization of Animal Diseases), three university-level research laboratories (the animal vaccine creation center, the fish disease and fishery research laboratory, and the veterinary parasitic disease laboratory). In the past five years, the faculty members have undertaken more than 80 national and ministerial-level research projects, with a total research funding of over 85 million RMB, published over 530 research papers, including over 250 SCI papers, published four course books: Veterinary Infectious Diseases (Sixth Edition), Veterinary Microbiology (Fifth Edition), Introduction to Animal Protection, and Veterinary Biological Products (Third Edition), and ten monographs, have been approved of eight state invention patents, one state new veterinary drug registration certificate, and have won four awards of Jiangsu Province Science and Technology Achievement. In 2005, the program of Stroke Streptococcus Prevention and Control Technology won the second prize of National Science and Technology Progress Award. The department has close international cooperation with Germany, the United States and Canada.