Within the last month, Purina donated $4.5 million dollars to Cornell University, University of California, Davis and Colorado State University. Last year, Kansas State University announced a “partnership” with Hill’s donating an undisclosed amount.
In Purina’s press release the company stated: “These three new programs build on Purina’s decades-long history of supporting veterinary schools and students and promise to offer exciting scientific and nutritional advances to help our pets live long, healthy lives.”
With the Hill’s/Kansas State partnership, a Kansas State associate dean stated: “we are celebrating an improved standard of education for our students and services for our clients.”
But are these donations a true “improved standard of education” for veterinary students?
Or are they producing a biased/incomplete veterinary education?
In 2009, medical school students at Harvard brought to light a similar incompleteness to their education. From a New York Times article at the time: “In a first-year pharmacology class at Harvard Medical School, Matt Zerden grew wary as the professor promoted the benefits of cholesterol drugs and seemed to belittle a student who asked about side effects.
Mr. Zerden later discovered something by searching online that he began sharing with his classmates. The professor was not only a full-time member of the Harvard Medical faculty, but a paid consultant to 10 drug companies, including five makers of cholesterol treatments.
“I felt really violated,” Mr. Zerden, now a fourth-year student, recently recalled. “Here we have 160 open minds trying to learn the basics in a protected space, and the information he was giving wasn’t as pure as I think it should be.”
Is this same “violation” happening in veterinary schools? Students with open minds who are trying to learn in an assumed protected environment, but is the education they are receiving ‘not as pure’ as it should be?
Personal opinion: Veterinary students need to closely examine their potential vet school’s conflict-of-interest policies. Full disclosure of faculty’s ties with industry should be required prior to admission. Students should be leary of any veterinary school that will not provide this disclosure and leary of any school that is heavily partnered with a pet food manufacturer or veterinary drug manufacturer.
From the personal experience of friend Kelly Bone (Facebook Group Saving Pets One Pet @ A Time), Kansas State University shared her pet food testing results – WITHOUT HER PERMISSION – with the pet food manufacturer. “When my dog, Duncan died from Science diet, we sent the food away to K-State for testing. K-State sent the results to Hills and copied me and my lawyer on it. Do you think there is a conflict of interest?”
Absolutely.
Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,
Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
Author Buyer Beware, Co-Author Dinner PAWsible
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