Source: The New York Times
(August 8, 2022) It’s difficult to find veterinary care nearly everywhere right now, even when it isn’t an after-hours emergency. During the first year of the pandemic alone, Americans adopted new animals in record numbers, and an estimated 23 million households brought home a new pet that year. But it’s important to consider these numbers in the context of a mind-boggling economy of scale. The number of pet adoptions and surrenders fluctuates all the time, and for many reasons. Millions of pets ended up in shelters every year before the pandemic, and millions of others will end up in shelters even after the economy recovers...Read more» |
Source: The Hill
(August 2, 2022) With continued record-high temperatures affecting the planet, it’s crucial that we consider the needs of our pets who are particularly susceptible to heat stress. Regardless of the global warming phenomenon taking place, heat-related injuries, such as heatstroke, are issues veterinarians routinely encounter in our patients during the summer months. However, there are some essential steps that pet parents can take to keep their furry loved ones safe and avoid emergency hospital visits...Read more» |
Source: The San Francisco Chronicle
(July 18, 2022) The average American consumes an estimated 224.8 pounds of red meat and poultry each year — primarily chicken, beef and pork. That level of consumption requires a robust, accessible, safe and inexpensive supply chain to bring animal products from farms to tables. During emergencies, however, it also demands the rapid destruction of large populations of animals, including aggressive policies to prevent the spread of zoonotic avian influenza among fowl or COVID-19 among the agricultural workforce. The sanitized term for these mass killings of animals — usually on industrial farms — is “depopulation.”...Read more» |
Source: dvm 360
(June 30, 2022) A bill put forward by the Arizona Humane Society (AHS) and Humane Society of Southern Arizona (HSSA) was signed into law as part of Arizona’s state budget next year. Sponsored by senator T.J. Shope, SB1271 will address the veterinary shortage in the state by providing incentives to keep veterinarians working within the state. This new bill will create a new Arizona Veterinary Loan Assistance Program, which will provide student loan reimbursement, up to $100,000, to veterinarians who graduated from school after January 1, 2023. To qualify for the reimbursement veterinarians must work in Arizona for at least 4 years, and it will be required for 2 of those years spent at a municipal, county, or nonprofit shelter or in an agricultural practice that the USDA designated as having a shortage...Read more» |
Source: The Financial Times (Tiered subscription model)
(May 2022) Every year 1.5 billion pigs are killed for food, many of them raised indoors in cramped conditions. In the US, Brazil and elsewhere, sows are generally kept in gestation crates — metal cages, often 2 metres long and 60 centimetres wide, in which breeding sows weighing more than 200kg are confined for months at a time, unable to turn around. The cages enable as many as possible to be crammed into a shed. Indoors, pigs are unable to root around in the ground. They have so little stimulation that they sometimes end up gnawing the steel bars. Recommended McDonald's Corp Carl Icahn launches board fight at McDonald’s over treatment of pigs A more rounded, sensitive view of pigs’ interior lives would have large commercial implications...Read more»
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Source: BBC News
(May 18, 2022) Research from the Royal Veterinary College has revealed the health of pugs is now substantially different and largely worse than other dogs. The study compared the health of 4,308 pugs and 21,835 non-pugs. UK pugs are almost twice as likely to experience one or more disorders annually, compared with other dogs. Overall, pugs were found to be around 1.9 times as likely to have one or more disorders recorded in a single year compared to non-pugs...Read more» |
Source: HumanePro
(April 2022)
It started with a cat rescuer, a veterinarian and a commitment to help community cats in Bend, Oregon. With help from about 10 other volunteers, the Bend Spay & Neuter Project launched in 2004. Surgeries were performed on weekends in the rescuer’s garage. By 2021, when it celebrated its 50,000th surgery and was operating as a program of the Humane Society of Central Oregon, the clinic had its own building with two surgery suites, seven paid staff members and a cadre of longtime volunteers. The only nonprofit clinic in a three-county area, it offered low-cost spay/neuter surgeries, wellness clinics and a pet food bank. By late summer, the clinic went from operating four days a week to one, with Bloodworth taking time from her shelter duties to perform spay/neuter surgeries for the public. “We tried to hobble along in that capacity,” she says, but there were shelter animals who also needed surgeries and other medical treatments, and the shelter itself was understaffed. In early September, the humane society made the difficult decision to temporarily close the clinic, anticipating it would take two to three months to hire a new veterinary team...Read more» |
Source: Huffpost
(April 30, 2022) Research confirms what dog lovers know — every pup is truly an individual. Many of the popular stereotypes about the behavior of golden retrievers, poodles or schnauzers, for example, aren’t supported by science, according to a new study. “There is a huge amount of behavioral variation in every breed, and at the end of the day, every dog really is an individual,” said study co-author and University of Massachusetts geneticist Elinor Karlsson...Read more» |
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