Our veterinarians are armed with flea meds, vaccines, and kibble - but they aren't taught how dangerous these products are. Reactions are not rare. Non-reactions are rare. It is legal to give a dog 100mg of steroid a day due a fake "auto immune" disease caused by a booster, but it's not legal to suggest homeopathy to remove a vaccine reaction because it's not "proven," yet 200 years of healing human animals isn't enough proof.
With the major influence and presence of kibble companies at vet schools coupled with the little nutrition education required, is your vet really qualified to dole out nutrition advice?
The answer is NO.
The focus of vet schools, which are in fact are funded by kibble companies, is to treat symptoms and not actually heal our animals. This makes attaining an unbiased education very difficult, if not impossible. Check out the Pet Food Program from UC Davis, which allows members, residents, faculty and students receive pet food from brands like Hill and Royal Canin at heavily discounted prices. Purina also funded the Nutrition Centers at Tufts University Foster Hospital for Small Animals, Michigan State University, Colorado State University (Read more on that here)
All graduates of US veterinary schools, no matter when they graduated have nutrition integrated into their curriculum, as a required course or sprinkled into other aspects of coursework. Also, some nutrition knowledge is required to pass final veterinary licensing exams in the United States (Read more on that here). However, vets are not required to have robust nutrition knowledge in order to practice veterinary medicine.
It makes perfect sense that most vets will push a pill as the cure all for every ailment because that is how they have been taught, trained and educated. Despite all of this, most are in fact misinformed and miseducated.
As Dr. Karen Becker puts it:
“One of the interesting things that’s different between veterinary medicine and between human medicine (a lot of people don’t realize this) is that with human medicine, of course, there’s Big Pharma that’s funding millions, billions of dollars into research to promote a certain product. But in veterinary medicine, we’ve got major dog food companies and major pharmaceutical and vaccine companies that are funding research" (Read more on that here).
With the major influence and presence of kibble companies at vet schools coupled with the little nutrition education required, is your vet really qualified to dole out nutrition advice?
As Dr. Karen Becker puts it:
“One of the interesting things that’s different between veterinary medicine and between human medicine (a lot of people don’t realize this) is that with human medicine, of course, there’s Big Pharma that’s funding millions, billions of dollars into research to promote a certain product. But in veterinary medicine, we’ve got major dog food companies and major pharmaceutical and vaccine companies that are funding research" (Read more on that here).
So, what can you do?
- Do your own research
- Feed raw or home-cook
- Ask lots of questions
- Advocate for your animal
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Check out the video below from Dr. Becker on the best and worst pet foods