We do third year presentations which are supposed to be research-y in nature, and about 30 minutes of presentation? Not sure if I remember the time length. I don't remember the specifics because I did mine on my actual research project instead of a topic that needed to be freshly researched like everyone else. I think basically, you pick a topic of any kind that interests you and you have to have so many papers (ie primary lit) that you've referenced. I don't think you can use textbooks at all.
I don't think it's a great use of our time, but it is an easy A, I guess. No one watches your presentation because it's given during the lunch hour and no one is under any obligation to do so. I remember being terrified because the Dean was there for mine, and actually asked me a question that was fairly hard -- everyone else got off so easily!
I think your school does it better than mine already, by forcing it to be a vet topic or NAVLE prep. We get so many esoteric topics that just won't be useful. I think maybe requiring certain topics to be exhausted first would help, although I don't know how fair that would be. Something like, you have to exhaust the top X bovine diseases for NAVLE, for porcine, for dogs/cats, etc.