Monday, June 13, 2016

Prescription Pet Foods - Ignored Ethics

As I recently mentioned in a previous article, prescription pet foods have a list of problems, including never being proven to be safe or effective at what they claim the foods to be for, which caused the FDA to recently put in place a new compliance policy guidance stating that veterinarians are now responsible for the prescription foods. (I wonder how many veterinarians are even aware of this?)

Another issue that Susan Thixton, owner of TruthAboutPetFood.com, founding partner of AssociationforTruthinPetFood.com, and author of Buyer Beware, points out in a recent article is that one of the AVMA's  Principles of Veterinary Medical Ethics (PVME), is being ignored when it comes to prescription pet foods. She's absolutely right. Read her article by clicking here.

This should be a wake up call for pet food consumers who feed their pets prescription foods. Do you really want to be giving your pets foods that have never been proven safe or effective -- according to the FDA themselves -- who, for this reason, recently gave all responsibility for these foods to vets? Foods that vets are selling and profiting from while ignoring the very ethical conduct they are expected to adhere to, which is “Veterinarians shall not promote, sell, prescribe, dispense, or use secret remedies or any other product for which they do not know the ingredients.”?  Foods that contain the very ingredients that you want to be avoiding? Ingredients that violate federal law? As Susan Thixton states, "Do you think many veterinarians prescribing Rx pet foods know what poultry by products or animal fat is? Have they read the science on carrageenan? It’s simple…most do not know." 

Other questions I have are: Do you think they (vets) know what GMOs are? And that the Rx foods contain them? If they did, do you think they would still prescribe them, especially considering they are now the responsible party for Rx foods?

Check out this excellent article listing the Top Ten Myths About Pet Food and Nutrition by Dr. Jean Hofve, Holistic Veterinarian, and see what she has to say about prescription foods, which is the first on her list.

Here is a very informative (13 min.) video explaining GMOs and some of the studies done on them, by one of my favorite health researchers Mike Adams, The Health Ranger.





And another (9 min.) short video from Anthony Samsel of the Glyphosate paper by Samsel and Seneff, sharing results of a study as well: