Vets Are Paid By Crappy Commercial Brands To Promote There Dog Food To There Clients?

It's more a matter of truth than "agreeing"

The majority of vets are NOT formally trained on animal nutrition. Oftentimes when they are, the course is funded by a particular dog food brand.

Which in turn would give them the false idea of proper dog nutrition.

And yes, many are paid by a specific brand to promote their food.

Personally I think that they should admit to their clients that they have not been properly educated and refer them to a proper dog nutritionist, OR they should incorporate proper nutrition into their curriculum.

Either way, they're just doing their job and taking money incentive over actual compassion for the clients.

I worked for an animal hospital that promoted and sold Royal Canin brand. It's not a crappy brand either. A lot of the diets they make are prescription, which is beneficial to the dog or cat with a certain medical condition. The vet I worked with fed her animals this brand.

As far as the vet getting paid by Royal Canin to sell their food, that did not happen. She sold the food because she believed it was a good brand.

ADD: Where oh where do some people get the idea that veterinarians are not trained in nutrition? I suppose you think if you read an article written by anyone, then it must be true.

I think it depends on the vet to be honest.

My vet went through nutrition training about the same as I did (ie, before she went to the elective class sponsored by a dog food company, then she went to the canine nutritionist I was studying under.) She knows what's a good food, and what isn't.

However, she sells Science Diet in her clinic. She has never recommended it to me, and has told me that the only reason she sells it is that she has 4 large dogs at home and gets free food. She doesn't have a problem with feeding it to her dogs... but said that the better quality stuff is what she would prefer, but free is free. Those were close to her EXACT words. She said the kickbacks she got weren't that great (sorry, if a vet sells any food in their clinic, they WILL get a percentage of the money. Just for space rental if nothing else.) But the free bags of food made it so that it cost her nothing to feed her dogs, and she considered that a good trade-off.

Now maybe there are vets who sell it only because they believe it's the best stuff. Maybe there are vets who honestly don't have a clue about some of the advances made. But I can speak for my vet because we talked as friends about it. She loves that my boy is on Taste of the Wild and had no problem when he was on a BARF diet when he was a puppy and we were fighting sicknesses.

So my belief is that vets don't have enough training, the training they get is biased, they DO get kickbacks and such, and they do benefit from selling specific brands in their clinics. Kind of a combo of all.

I know your dad has you hoodwinked into believing everything he says, but maybe you should do some actual research before you malign an entire profession. Beyond the free samples to give out, vets aren’t paid a dime to recommend any specific type of food. They give out that food as a courtesy to their clients because a good 1/3 or them are feeding Ol’Roy and other garbage. Vets don’t even get free food to feed to their own adult dogs. If your vet recommended Beniful, its probably because the only companies out there who actually perform scientific research on their foods to a level that satisfies medical standards are 1. Purina 2. Hills (science diet) 3. Iams and 4. Royal Canin. All of the rest of the companies don’t do that or if they do, they never bother to publish their research in any of the journals an actual vet would read. OF COURSE they won’t recommend a food like Nutro because they have no actual proof of how well it works! Recommending a food without knowing the research behind it would be like giving your pet a drug based on rumor.

I don't believe the vets are receiving money or kickbacks fro the food. Some suggest brands they don't carry. They do get kickbacks on other products like certain brands of microchips etc but not food. Majority are not educated on nutrition & have not done the research since leaving school.

Nutro is no longer a good brand & in fact has been having problems lately. For the other person who didn't have the links, here is a good one from yesterday about the FDA investigating them after so many pet illnesses & deaths recently from changing their formula again.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/04/nutr...

This is all why it is important to do your own research for your own individual dog. Each one is different & has different tastes & requirements which why there is not one best food out there.

Well some dogs don't do well on the highest quality food. Or maybe she just wasn't doing well on the top quality food you gave her. And most dogs love to eat lower quality food because often it's sprayed with fat or something else that tastes nice to them. If you're on a budget, the best cheapest high quality food is Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul. It's about $1/lb. The next one down is the dog food from Costco (if you have a membership). It's the Kirkland brand food, it's very very decent. Not much fillers and mostly good stuff. It's about $0.50/lb. It's much better than some of the brands out there like Pedigree or Beneful, etc.

It is possible that they are paid by the companies to endorse their products.

However, I talked to our shelter Vet Tech about this and she had a more sensical and less 'big brother' explanation.

What it comes down to is vets are not nutritionists. The ONLY nutrition class they take is often sponsored by Purina or Hills. So they learn all about nutrition from their point of view. Once they graduate school, they're more concerned about starting up their practice as opposed to reading about the new and better foods that are out there.

Put yourself in their shoes, if you had to choose to endorse something you new a lot about and with the knowledge you had was 'good' or something that you don't know anything about and may be good or bad (but you're not sure). You would probably choose the one that you knew something about. It doesn't make it right, but I understand their logic in supporting the things they know more about.

Good vets will keep themselves in the loop, learning about new practices, ideas and even foods. Mediocre vets will follow what they learned in vet school and not concern themselves about all the 'new food' that doesn't have a ton of research to back it up. Vets are ruled by research and experiments, not by common sense. Which his why they say Hills or Purina is the best.

No i don't agree. I worked for a few clinics during my schooling none of them were paid by any company to sell their food. I even knwo of some vets and people who work in the vet field who promote raw diets as well as food that is not sold by their clinic.

They also have numbers to a few of the I believe 5 canine nutritionist to people who are considering feeding raw diets to make sure the pets will be fed a proper diet.

I live in canada and I seem to have notice that vets here are more interested in the well being of the pets they service to than selling something they know is crap. I don't know of anyone other than my parents in law who were asked if/to buy vet food. But for the parents in law I understand why, their dog has diabetes which lead to him getting pancreatitis and in these cases you don't want to mess around with their food or else it can be deadly. So for his safety they recommend he stay on a certain type of food that has been known and clinically proven to help lessen flare ups.

Beneful is one of the worst foods on the market, and has produced more stomach roll overs due to the wheat, corn and crappy fillers in it. the dog eats it then drinks water, I agree sometimes too much water, but the wheat, corn swell up fast in a dogs stomach, whcih can kill a dog fast if not treated immediately.

Protect your dogs life, research the brand before buying it.

That vet must have never ever tried to study up dog foods....Idiot to recommend Beneful.

My vet will not sell any dog foods out of his clinic, never has...gives clients a choice of the top dog foods, but will not recommend just one.

Vets that sell food out of their clinics, do gdt paid for selling it and recommending it to clients..Just because a vet sells it or recommends it, does not mean it is good...by far no way Iams, Eukanuba, Science Diet are good foods, but hey they do it for the money ,not for the nutrition of the dog at all.

It's a shame, greed of BYB,. Puppy Mills, Pet Stores and now vets rule the dog world.....It is a shame.

Our shelter does not recommend any dog foods except top grade, they even explain to the clients adopting from the shelter, what foods not to feed......

Most vets sell dog food. Mine does. If he puts it on his shelf, he gets a huge discount. His profit margin is higher. That is about the way it is.

As far as vets knowing anything about nutrition, I would say for the most part the ones who have been around for the last 25-30 years don't.

What veterinarian schools are turning out now? Yes, I do believe they know much more and it will become apparent in generations coming up.

My God daughter is majoring in veterinarian medicine. She has already started research on what goes into pet food. I was floored when she pointed out an ingredient in the food I WAS feeding and told me it was a filler made from rubber/tires?!!

I changed immediately. That is just one example of the education our future professional animals caregivers will have.