Source: Daily Paws
(April 22, 2022) If you're a pet lover with cat allergies, you've certainly wondered whether there are hypoallergenic cats. The prospect of being able to hold a fluffy kitty without sniffling, sneezing, or itching sounds too good to be true for many of us. A whopping three in 10 people living in the United States have dog or cat allergies. And cat allergies are around two times more common than dog allergies. If you have pet allergies, there are ways to limit your suffering, but odds are you're going to be at least a little uncomfortable around most cats. For now at least. Researchers are getting closer to developing a hypoallergenic cat using gene-editing technology that eliminates or alters DNA that encodes the protein humans are allergic to...Read more» |
Source: Los Angeles Times
(April 18, 2022) Across the country, about 23 million families adopted a pet in the first year of the pandemic. Other pet owners, working from home, started paying more attention to their animals’ daily routines, noticing symptoms such as vomiting or coughing. The resulting spike in pet health concerns has been straining a corner of the medical world that doesn’t get as much attention as doctors and nurses: veterinarians. The overwork and staffing shortages of the pandemic have affected veterinarians as much as other doctors and nurses, and dealing with the constant moral dilemmas and emotional output was driving many to burn out even before 2020. The mean salary for vets is about $110,000 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about half that of physicians catering to people...Read more» |
Source: Animals
(February 23, 2022) During the COVID-19 pandemic, many veterinary practices have been required to move to a low or no-contact consultation model to minimise the risk of SARS-CoV-2. Utilising data from a global survey, we explored the experiences of veterinary team members performing low and no-contact euthanasia during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that low and no-contact euthanasia were encountered as common and/or stressful ethical challenges in the pandemic...Read more» |
Source: JAVMA
(January 14, 2022) There are 580,000 homeless individuals in the US as indicated by an annual count done in 2020, but other estimates put the number much higher. According to general observations and intermittent counts, approximately 10% of people experiencing homelessness have pets. Based on this estimate, 58,000 to 140,000 pets likely exist in the US that belong to owners who have no funds for veterinary care. The exact number is hard to ascertain because pet owners constitute a hidden subpopulation of those experiencing homelessness, oftentimes due to concerns about their pets being taken from them...Read more»
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Source: The New York Times
(January 21, 2022) A study published in The Canadian Veterinary Journal last year found an association between the organized movement against mandatory vaccines for children and vaccine-resistant pet owners. “The anti-vaccination movement was a cause for concern before Covid,” said Lori Kogan, one of the study’s authors and a professor at Colorado State University who studies human-animal interactions. “It’s certainly a cause for concern now.” Kogan is also conducting a follow-up study exploring pet vaccine hesitancy in the wake of Covid-19, with data due within the next few months...Read more»
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Source: VIN News Service
(January 17, 2022) We enter veterinary medicine because we love working with animals, helping clients care for their furry family members and the camaraderie of a team dedicated to making our patients' lives better. But I have seen many great veterinary technicians quit because they are spent. They are tired not just of the long hours or lack of adequate time off. They are tired of the veterinary profession sacrificing their basic needs in the quest for profit. The profession is going through a crisis. A shortage of veterinarians and veterinary technicians is putting too much work on too few shoulders. This, of course, has been exacerbated by the pandemic and the shutdown of veterinary clinics early on, but it was on the horizon before COVID-19...Read more» |
Source: VIN News Service
(January 10, 2022) I have been reluctant to raise the subject of ventilation shutdown — a technique used in crisis situations for mass killing livestock through heatstroke — because I have seen conversations become adversarial and even hostile, resulting in a fracturing of the veterinary profession. But this topic is so important that I cannot be silent. I hope we can discuss it and avoid personal attacks by focusing on solutions...Read more»
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Source: The New York Times
(December 16, 2021) It’s hard to know where your charitable dollars will do the most good. This year, I’ll focus most of my giving on GiveDirectly, which does exactly what it promises: Gives money to the world’s poorest people, without attaching strings, conditions or complexity. But about 10 percent of my donations every year goes to easing, or ending, the suffering of factory farmed animals, which is mind-melting in its scale. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that about 80 billion — yes, billion — land animals are slaughtered each year for food, and, according to some estimates, between 51 billion and 160 billion farmed fish join them. The overwhelming majority of these animals are raised and killed in conditions with no analogue in history, and they suffer terribly...Read more» |
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