More Vets Smoke Camels #2: What Do Vets Learn About Pet Nutrition?

Host Jennifer: Well, welcome back to another episode and we are going to continue on our amazing series. I was, I learned so much on the first episode of what we're calling more vets, smoke camels, and we are on episode two. And I would like to kind of throw it over to Dan because he does such a good job of summarizing the purpose of the series. What we talked about in episode one. Well, we will talk about episode two. We really were focusing on the facts, which is what every episode does, but I think it's really good to kind of, there's a lot of evidence and I felt a little bit like CSI.

Like you would send me over some documents and we would go through them together. So this is going to be a really good series in terms of opening up the doors to a subject that not a lot of people understand or a privy to, or just really understand in general.

Host Dan: Yeah, it's like there's there's so we have the word facts in the title of our podcast, feed your dog facts. And the concepts of facts and evidence have like two completely different usages that are both really relevant to the material that we cover on this show. So one is what does the science show about important companion, animal nutrition topics? What that's, what we consider the evidence or the facts when it comes to knowledge about substantive, specific issues like we've covered on past shows, how much protein should my dog eat each day? Well, in order to answer that question, we go to the scientific record and we look at the peer reviewed studies because those serve as evidence supporting or refuting, uh, you know, the specific topic we're pushing out there. Now, on the other hand in a non-scientific domain facts and evidence are demonstrating a completely different kind of way. So think of like a trial we're trying to determine, did Jen defraud dozens of, um, of people in, in the state of, uh, Illinois in 2018, is that a true statement or not? Well, it's gonna depend on what the evidence shows about that, right? That's what the court is going to get to the, to use, to make its decision. And so in that case, we're looking at documentary evidence, is there in writing something that shows the fact that we're trying to prove we're going to look at testimonial evidence. What do people that have personal knowledge about this issue, you or the dozens of people that you have allegedly to frauded have to say about the subject? And then there's like, uh, other forms, physical evidence, you know, we think a CSI DNA and fingerprint analysis, stuff like that. So this show is focused on that category of facts and evidence. We're going to be talking about, like you said, um, an issue that's relevant to understanding what your veterinarian knows about nutritional science topics. And like you said, this is a companion piece to an episode that we've already put out there. So the, our first more vets smoke camels show was highlighting basically what, uh, like how much information your veterinarian is taught about nutritional science topics. And you can go to the show from our website, from the show page on any one of your, like, whatever your favorite podcast platform is. And you can listen, but basically the take home message is they're not taught very much with some really, really small exceptions. The amount that they're taught is shockingly little. I have a few things I intend to use as a visual aid today, but I mean like one I'll highlight right here is like, this is the, if you're watching the video, you can see the thickness of this pamphlet that was used in one of the top vet schools in the country. When I was writing my book, oh God, I'm knocking my pity all over the place. And it's like, you know, Technical difficulties. Yeah. I mean, it's like a flimsy looks like it just like a handout for a museum tour or something. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of the top three vet schools in the country and the only printed materials that, that students are required to look at. So, so anyway, that's, you can learn all about that subject. If you go to the, the first episode, our first feature dog facts, more vet smoke camel's episode. Second one today is about what information that's are taught. What is there, are there problems with that information and specifically, is there an issue of bias? Is there an issue that the information is all telling a biased story because it's coming from a similar source and you can probably guess the answer unfortunately is yes. That a second major problem. In my estimation with what the veterinary community is taught about nutritional science topics is that all the information they're taught from the time they enroll in veterinary school to the time they finished their third decade of clinical practice as your neighborhood vet, the vast majority of the information that they're taught is created by funded, by comes directly from in ways we're going to catalog on this show. One of a very small cluster of major pet food companies. Um, and that's sort of the take home message that I think we're going to be able to show and demonstrate to you guys, as we talk through, through all the supporting facts, but kind of before we go into it, I wanted to go into the McDonald's thing that I was talking to you about. Like, basically there's a, my experience of, uh, of being a pet owner and being a consumer of veterinary services is like, I, I already have sort of, even before writing a book, that's like really focused on this stuff had like internalized the idea that, yeah, of course my vet gets their information from Royal Canin. And Hill's like, every time you walk into a veterinary office, you're going to see those logos like quickly, either in flyers and posters that are on it, on the walls, you're there in all likelihood, they're going to be selling products that are made by one of those two brands, again, Hills and Royal Canin. But like it think of your own veterinary experience and just think of like how much you may have internalized the presence of those brand, like as being a part of the environment, the veterinary environment that you go into. And what I think of as the McDonald's analogy is designed to kind of challenge how normalized that type of thinking has become, like, think of how much outrage you would feel if you went into your doctor's office, not your dog's doctor, your doctor's office. And when you're there talking about your backache or your insomnia or whatever doctor turns around, and there's a whole list of different pamphlets created by McDonald's or Coca-Cola or PepsiCo or any, one of the other huge corporate food brands in the United States. Like you would feel if you're anything like me, you feel shocked by it. Like you would never tolerate like your V your doctor being like, oh, here's the McDonald's advice on what your three balanced meals a day should look like you, it would you be completely outraged? That's exactly not exactly by analogy. That is the situation that you experienced in every veterinary office, in the country. These companies Hill's pet nutrition, Royal Canin, which is a brand produced by Mars, pet care are the, you know, by analogy, the equivalent of McDonald's or Coca-Cola, they're the largest Mo like highest income corporate pet food producers in the world among them in the top five. And they're, they've got not just like a seated at the table when your vet is being taught about veterinary nutritional topics. They are the only real voice. They're the only place everything your vet is taught, comes through them in one way or another. And we'll go into the specifics as we go on. It's such a change of perspective because I never really thought about that or doubted it or question it, or even really noticed it, right. I go to my, but I, when my dog was on a prescription diet, I had to go to my bed to get this food. My vet would say, okay, here's some changes. Here's a, exactly a pamphlet from this company. You can find the food here and just think about that. You going to your medical doctor and him being like, you need to hydrate more stop and get a few cans of Coke on the way out. You're like, what? It just, the, the, the disparity between industries is just mind boggling because we've accepted it for so long, because that's all we've been exposed to where it's a very common practice among these veterinary clinics. And it kind of gets worse. The more like corporate or chain, um, the vet clinic is open into all of that, but yeah, it's, it's, it's such a good call-out. I'm so glad you're starting off with a McDonald's allergen analogy After One McDonald's analogy. Um, and it's just, we've taken it for granted for too long. Yeah. And it's like, there are just a couple of things that help to show, like why you do see despite this being an analogy that holds water in my view, you don't want well, so how come I don't see why doesn't, McDonald's try to do that. So my doctor, and there are a couple of things that stand out to me. One is that there are a grid, there are only 32 veterinary schools in the United States. And the number of rising like there are, I think there are about a hundred thousand practicing vets in the U S at any given moment. The number of us, that's not a big number when you compare it against the scale of these, that these companies have achieved, where they're doing billions of dollars of business a year. If you were so inclined to say, like, look, I want to get one message in front of every veterinary student in the country. Somebody draw me up a plan for how we're going to do that. You got to get into 32 schools. It's not, not all that difficult. It's much harder to get into every medical school. There are a great deal. More medical schools in the country is, is kind of one thing to keep in mind. The second thing to keep in mind is that the sources of funding available for veterinary research and veterinary knowledge dissemination are just way smaller than the number. Then the kind and scale of the resources that are available for human scientific, human focused, scientific research, medical research institutions, like the national Institute of health to provide tons of funding for, you know, human focused medical research don't exist in the veterinary world. Um, we've, as a matter of public policy have chosen not to create those kinds of things in the U S and there just don't really exist. And so if you want to do like why the money has to come from somewhere, you want to make a vet school, you want to teach veterinarians about the things they need to know if the money's got to come from somewhere. And there's not very, very little of it is coming from public sources. And so the guys who occupy the big seat at the table are the for-profit entities. That's there. They play like out of all the dollars that are available to teach vets. It's just a bigger fraction of that comes from industry, the available ones, the available dollars in the veterinary world than in the human medical world. And so like, McDonald's even as big as they are. Can't meaningfully compete with the national institutes of health Hills is the biggest player when it comes to the veterinary side of it just, there's just no equivalently, large entity. So those two things are why you don't see the same. There's not a French fries are the best, uh, pamphlet in your doctor's office. You know, French fries are a part of a healthy, balanced diet. I mean, it's, we call the show more vets smoke camels. And because there was a time and it wasn't that long ago where there was a non sarcastic ad campaign called more doctors smoke camels. Okay. The idea that a whole community of very intelligent, very scientifically focused people can be misled into recommending something that is as deadly as smoking cigarettes is not a theoretical outlandish idea. Okay. That happens in the United States while your grandparents were alive. Okay. So like, let's not, let's not kid ourselves by being like, oh, how ridiculous. If the doctor was saying, is French fries are a part of a healthy diet? It's like, I mean, that's, I could think of much more ridiculous situations that we're being asked to swallow every day. So Yeah. I mean, it exactly, it was the 1950s. It wasn't the 1810s. So yeah, it, it, and you know, you always pull me away of, of understanding the connections and discussing all the connections. But I have to remember that you spent literally years going down the rabbit hole of all this information, and it's all evidenced in your book. If you want the we're going to do a great deal of like, here's where this comes from. Here's where this assertion comes from today. But if you want the really deep dive version, you can get a free copy of the book. It's in the show notes. We'll give you an E copy. We can't, I'm not going to print a copy and send it to you because I can't, that's going to lose. I just can't afford to do that, but you can download a free copy, um, show notes, go there, and that you can see there's, you know, the, the references section is a hundred pages long. So there's a lot of things, Hey, we're all nerds at heart on the podcast. So we'll make sure you have page numbers. We'll make sure you understand what chapter to look for, because if you are truly invested in this subject, it is fascinating. And we cannot cover everything we want to cover in the 45 minutes to an hour that we normally record a podcast episode. So, anyway, so yeah, so let's kind of talk about the, all these industries and companies and really their presence of all their presence with all these bad schools, like you said, there's only 32 in the country, so it's not, It depends exactly how you classify. It's like an accreditation body. And I think there's like a Caribbean school. That's like falls either on one side or the other side, but it's basically, it's 32 or 29, or it's like, depends. Who's I'm talking hundreds is the capacity here. Yeah, exactly. Um, okay. I, sorry, you can't do this topic without telling is the story of how this started becoming a thing in the first place. This is told in my book, it's been somewhat widely reported, but I never, it never ceases to surprise people when I tell them that this whole idea that your veterinarian is going to be influenced heavily by pet food companies comes from toothpaste. Basically. Um, there, there was a point in the 1980s where Hill's pet nutrition was a middling, one of a few pet food brands, trying to find its own, uh, identity and its own niche and its own kind of like engine for growth. And, um, it was around the time that the company got acquired. Hill's pet nutrition has been around since, before the turn of the 20th century. So finally in the 1980s, it got acquired by a major alar, even larger company, a big conglomerate of consumer products called Colgate Palmolive and Colgate Palmolive is more well-known for making toothpaste products. And they're particularly well-known for a marketing campaign that they've enjoyed tremendous success with right before they acquired Hills, which is they came somebody at at Colgate Palmolive came to the realization that like, look, instead of trying to directly persuade individual teeth brushers, that we've got the best toothpaste for them. We're going to just operate on the assumption that people don't even listen. So what the commercial says about what the best toothpaste is, what they do is they go to their dentist. And if their dentist says to them, this is the right toothpaste for you, then that's the toothpaste they're going to lean on. And so he'll Colgate Palmolive said, we're not going to even worry about trying to make commercials. We're just going to persuade the dentist. If we can persuade the dentist that we make the right toothpaste, then it's going to work in our favor because the dentists are going to influence the individual people with teeth. And that's what they did. And they were colossally successful doing it. They increase the light scale of the company by like 10 X over a short period of time. And it was in, that was basically in the lead up the diligence phase to when they, when Colgate Palmolive acquired Hill's pet nutrition and their idea was we're going to do it the exact same way. We had this great success with dentists. We're going to do the same thing with veterinarians. We got a small community. We don't have to worry about convincing, um, individual pet owners that there's something special about Hill's products. If we can just convince their veterinarians, we're gonna, if we can do that successfully, then work well for the company. And lo and behold, it worked phenomenally well for the company. The reason that Hills is still a household name today is because that was a very successful process. Basically. Um, you can read, there's a wonderful journalist, whose name is Tara Parker, Pope, who I think has just moved on from New York times, but used to work for New York times. She's written about this, the, the, like what executives are involved, how they made this decision. It's pretty fascinating. There's, it's covered extensively in my book if you want some more of it, but that's basically how it came into being and it worked. And so they just leaned on it. And today that's the cornerstone of what Hills does. You know what I mean? Like there's no, they make a whole line of prescription only products that you can't get those products. You can't just go buy them. Your vet has to tell you that they think that's the right product for you. And that, that really underscores, like without this whole, that's not a small part of their product line. That's their Hill's prescription diet line. That's like a big part of that company. And you literally can't even just go to the store and buy it. You've got to have your veterinarian recommended. So it's like, they're clearly successful in influencing what veterinarians believe about the health of their products, All star from toothpaste, such a great story. And it's still right. And to be clear, the strategy is still ongoing. It's not a, it wasn't a flash in the pan marketing campaign. If it was a strategic focus for them of like, we want vets to recommend our food, we want vets to sell the food. It was very much deliberate and it still is ongoing. So it's not something that stopped a few years ago. This is very much till today. What you've seen, uh, more recently is other brands trying to get in on the action. So to speak, it's hard to push out, um, like an established interest. So at the time that I wrote my book and that was published in 2016, more than half of the vet schools in the country had a named professorship from Hills, there was the Hill's pet nutrition chair of blah-blah-blah nutrition at more than half of the schools in the country. That is by far from the only way that funding is provided from corporate interests to vet schools directly. But that's kind of like the top of the pile. If you're doing that, that's like the best you can imagine. It's like a, if an individual philanthropist provides money to a university, they get a building named after them. It's the equivalent of that visit that the leading chair, the leading professor in the nutrition department of the school is the Hill's pet nutrition and Ameritas professor of nutrition or whatever, and more than half the schools in the country. And so they've locked it down in the U S so successfully that like the, the smaller, but still like reasonably well-funded firms that are trying to get in on that strategy have had to go basically to Canada, like a woman that I know reasonably well is a leading nutritional science, veterinary, nutritional science researcher at this Canadian university called the university of wealth. And just over the past, I think two years, her title got changed to incorporate there that she's the champion pet foods, blah, blah, blah, nutrition, professor of such and such at the university of wealth champion pet foods is the brand that makes the aura or the company that makes origin brand foods, Icana brand foods. So they've tried to like, they basically co-opted this same strategy, but you can't even do it at the big us vet schools like Davis or Tufts or whatever, because they're just like fully locked down already by the by Hills. So, yeah, that's, that's like a fact that that always kind of blows people's minds, but it's like they get in much earlier. So like the first exposure, if you are somebody that is one day going to be in a position of recommending nutritional things to a pet owner with authority, you start out by going to vet school, that's kind of like you go to college and then you've made your first call for someday. I'm going to be a professional recommender of pet food products. You're going to vet school. That's how that all starts. Right. And that's the level at that's like the first stage of when brands start to kind of get their hooks into veterinarians. And I recount several different firsthand experiences in the book, but basically what it looks like is there are student reps for these companies. And so when I went to law school, we had the same equivalent type of thing around, um, companies that provide like test prep services. So if you want to take, if you want to be a lawyer, you're gonna to pass the bar and it costs in order to prep for that test, it's like a course that costs $10,000. And in order to sell, I know exactly in order to sell those courses, those prep courses to the law students, basically the companies would go on campus, recruit individual students to serve as on-campus reps. And the exact same thing takes place with regard to pet food products and on veterinary campuses. And what they basically provide is they train up these representatives to explain why their products are so special and tell other students that they get a big discount, either free or big discounted food products. If they get them all, if they sign up for the Hill's mailing list and decide to purchase all their food from Hills. So you're a, you're a student, okay. You're not making the big bucks at that point in your life. And you're an animal lover because you're there in veterinary school, you've got a pet in all likelihood. It's a big incentive, big incentive to sign up and be on the Hills train. Cause Hills is saying, look, we'll give you free food. You just got to be willing to sit through our lectures and those kinds of things. So it starts at the very earliest stage through on-campus reps. And then through the professorships, like I said, more than half the schools in the countries have a named professorship from Hill's pet nutrition. So it's a huge, significant amount. Wow. I had no idea. Yeah, I know The professorship. Wow. So, but, but that's the only, like that's just an indication that the school has received money from them. That's not, that's not, doesn't, that's suggestive of bias maybe, but it's not, it's, it's not, as far as the proof goes. If you want to see the actual bias, you can see it much closer to home. So you're a student, you're a veterinary student. You're at your school. You've been pitched on the, get your free Hills pet products from our on-campus rep. You've noticed that the highest ranking nutrition professor at your school is named after Hill's pet nutrition. Their title is named after Hill's pet nutrition. Okay. That's one thing when you sit down and you go to your nutrition class, if you're going to do the one that you've got to beat, you're required to take at one of the best vet schools in the country. This thing that I'm holding up here is your quote unquote, textbook this like 70 page pamphlet. If you want to do one of the big boy classes, you get a real textbook. And here's an example of that. This is the fourth edition of what's like basically the leading texts that's used in veterinary nutrition programs. So there's only 32 schools. We're not talking about, um, dozens and dozens of different textbooks available. You've got fewer than you can count on one hand basically. And so this is kind of like the garden variety. This is the most like, well, as I think this is basically the most widely used, I don't have that fact exactly. This is a very widely used textbook. And, um, as you can see, it's a hugely significant thing that goes into all kinds of detail about important topics. But you'll also notice on the back of the book is a Hill's pet nutrition logo. And the reason it says compliments of Hills. And the reason that that is what you'll find on the back logo is because of the four editors who put, oh, here's another there folks. Again, I'm like holding up this book to the camera so that folks can see what I'm describing, but there are four people who this book was dedicated to and they are all four members of one family, the Morris family, and the Morris family is the family that founded Hill's pet nutrition. Mark Morris senior is the guy who founded Hill's pet nutrition, Morris equals Hills, basically that's, that's like kind of the take-home thing to, to, to, to recall. But, um, like more than that, I've got, this is a book as for editors. Okay. Like basically the way textbooks are created is you have a small cluster of folks who serve as editors who compile research from individual authors, put them all together into one book. In this case, you've got four and they're listed here and let's see one, this, the like named literally the top guy is a full-time employee of Hill's pet nutrition, vice president of research at Hills, uh, this, this here, veterinary fellow at Hills. And, um, I think those are the two that are literally full-time employees of Hill's pet nutrition at the time this book is created. So again, let's, you know, this is where I'll remind everybody about the McDonald's analogy. Like, think about what this would look like in the human medical world, if like your doctor went off to medical school and had to take very sensibly, a nutrient human nutrition course and what that, and there was a, when he got his textbook, it was a big red book with a golden arches on the front written by two, a vice-president of McDonald's and the guy from Coca-Cola like, it's just obviously like the students wouldn't even stand for it. It's so ridiculous. But it's the, that is the state of affairs. And it's not, I'm not cherry picking one book. Here's another canine and feline nutrition, not as serious a textbook, but the same idea. We're talking about small animal that's like companion animal or small animal, or the terms that are those most often used to describe dogs and cats in the veterinary world, canine, feline nutrition. And in this case, again, we've got four editors, K stair startle Hayak and rush. And in this case, we've got three out of four from Procter and gamble, pet care, Procter and gamble has since like divested their interest in pet care products. But they're, everybody's familiar with those, like the Procter and gamble name, because at the time they own brands like items and you can nouveau. So like, these are huge, you know, currently that like basically played the, um, uh, musical chairs game where like brands have shifted around from like one big Colgate Palmolive to Proctor and gamble tomorrows and these big, huge corporate conglomerates that own all kinds of human use food brands and pet care food brands. But the point is the same. This is a second of like three veterinary nutrition textbooks. Three out of four of the editors are the equivalent of a McDonald's vice-president Right. And I can't imagine all 32 vet schools are using different textbooks. I'm sure there is a stockpile of, okay, here's like the top three pet nutritionally. You said that in most school schools don't ever require a pet nutrition course. So they're going to have limits of what book in reference that they can use in these courses. So it's just astounding, um, for all of these pillars that they're kind of putting in these schools, um, again, it's, it's not that we're bashing that relationship. It's just the inherent bias that no other industries do this. It's like, Hey guys, this is odd. Like, why is nobody else talking about this? And it's because they've been doing it for so long. So, Well, it just encourages a kind of degree of healthy skepticism, I think around any topic that might be bad for the bottom line of these companies, right? If you're in a world where your doctor is taught about nutrition by McDonald's, okay, and your doctor tells you that quarter pounders and fries happened to be the two best types of food products for you to eat. You're going to view that with a degree of healthy skepticism, because you know that if McDonald's is behind it, they have a huge financial disincentive to promote any research. And it says, quarter pounders and fries are healthy for you. And that same reality. These are for profit entities held by public companies. Okay? These are not things where like, even if Colgate Palmolive said we're uniquely dedicated to promoting accurate nutritional information, more than the average bear, they have a legal obligation to their shareholders, not to put out information that's bad for the profitability of the company. They can't do it. They're going to get sued. If they put out research that says, here's the top, here's the chapter on the stuff that's really relevant to the bad things about Hill's products. They get sued. Okay. Not only is that clearly something that like, obviously no major financial, like major for-profit entity is going to do, but they are illegally blank. They have, they're not allowed to do that by law. So you've got to like approach any body of research that they're putting out there with that understanding that reality, that like a cigarette company is if a cigarette company creates your textbook, they're not putting information in there that says cigarettes give you lung cancer. Okay. That otherwise that is not a good use of their time and money. Exxon mogul is not putting together a climate change book that says our products cause climate change. That's just not how these things go. Yes. And it's so, so again, it's like, there are plenty of topics that are about nutritional matters, where wa Hills doesn't have a dog in the fight. You know what I mean? Like there are plenty of places where like the amount of water a dog needs per day. Well, that's not really something that Hills cares much about. And so on that subject, maybe the issue of there being involved in creating the material that's being taught, doesn't have a clear bias one way or the other on other issues. It's hugely central to it. And it's caught my eye, particularly around the issue of carbohydrate content because every product, every product made by Hill's pet nutrition and by the former, the brands that used to be on by-product or, and gamble rely extensively on the use of dietary carbohydrate, um, 40, 50, or more percent of the calories in that product come from dietary carbohydrate, every single one of their products. And so in order to like, you know, the reality is these products are stuffed with carbs and the folks that make those products are teaching the substantive information to what your, to your veterinarian. And so in my eyes, it encourages, encourages a degree of healthy skepticism around, um, like that specific issue in the minds of veterinarian. Yeah. I mean, as a shit, I feel like that would be a normal reaction, but I think it's, you know, these vets are saying, okay, I need to take this nutrition course. And that's the only thing offered to them. I think that also is an issue. It's not like they have two textbooks or an independent textbook or something that was all fraught. That's all that was given to them as all that was taught. So anyway, This is water, you know, that analogy, there's like a, uh, uh, anecdote of the author, David Foster Wallace giving a commencement speech at, I forget what university is, but he tells the anecdote of like two fish swimming along and being so, um, oblivious to their surroundings because the surroundings is all they've ever known. This is water. You have to continue if you're a fish and you want to remind yourself of like what the world you live in is you have to keep saying, this is water. This is water because all you live in your whole life is that that's what it is to be a veterinarian in the world of the big kibble era is just from day one. From the first day, you walk on that campus, these organizations that have a huge incentive regarding what you're being taught or the mouthpiece, they played a huge role every step along the way. And I should note that it's, there are sometimes they get a little tricky too. Like these are particularly glaring examples of like the, the corporation, not even really trying to hide their involvement. Okay. The Hill's logos on the back of the book, but there's a really important, like other way that they are able to influence the veterinary community, the nutritional science research community. And that's through the operation of what are essentially like front organizations. That sounds so like spy games, conspiracy theory. I don't know how else you want to describe it, but what the general description for these types of things are nonprofit organizations that have a, that have had their like reputation kind of laundered because they're removed from the real source of financing. And Hill's pet nutrition has created one that is like the gold standard in the industry, which is the Morris animal foundation, Morris animal foundation. If you pull up their website, even if you're not familiar, like plenty of folks that are listening to this right now already have a sense, an emotional reaction, a positive, emotional reaction. I would wager to the notion of the Morris animal foundation, like it is a feel good organization. We do a lot of good things to help animals. We're a nonprofit agency designed to make animals better. Awesome. That's the thing I can get behind as a pet owner. What's less promoted is that Morris is a reference to the founder of Hills, that to this day Hills employees and members of the Morris family continue to serve on the board of trustees and have, since the organization was founded. Okay. The there's, um, what, uh, basically, like I said, like the bait, the best term to use to describe the way that like this indirect influence from Hill's money into the research science community, veterinary community is like laundering. Like basically it's like taking, putting some steps in between the real source of the money and the recipient of the money so that you can feel like, no, this isn't coming from Hill's pet nutrition. This is coming from this wonderful organization, the Morris animal foundation. But when you scratch beneath the surface, you can see, I mean, like, I don't know, maybe some folks recognize off the top of their head that, that Mark Morris was the founder of Hill's pet nutrition. Maybe some people have pulled their federally required, um, tax forms and looked at who the members of the board of trustees are, but it's like, you got to pull it up right there. You can see that several of them are members of the Morris family. Yeah. Yeah. What you've also got to do is if you've got, if the government's going to give you non-profit status 5 0 1 C3 non-profit status, you got to disclose in some ways where your money is going and you could see through those same, this, this, what you've got pulled up here is that form the form nine 90 for the Morris animal foundation for a recent year. And you can see the Morris gives extensively to veterinary schools. You can see right here or a million dollars. Yeah, exactly. It's like, it's, you got to kind of know where to look, but you could see, like, this is another, you could, if your school doesn't have a Hills visiting professor of nutrition and your school has created its own pamphlet, instead of using the Hill's produced textbook, you might feel like, oh, well, see, I'm one from one of the good ones. Hills doesn't have a direct tie to my school. That's not the case. It's super easy for Hills to affect. What's like basically the budget of a major veterinary school without giving directly to the schools. And they just launder it through the Morris animal foundation. And you can see it right here. And they got a list of like, what are essentially the biggest, most reputable veterinary schools in the country and the amount of money that they've received from Morris in any one year. Yeah. Amount of cash grant is the title. And then purpose of grantor assistance. It says animal health studies, right? So these are direct cash grants. I'm assuming, assuming every year, right. They're donating. There's just a new format they're required to report every year. So this is information for just one year. So you're talking about millions of dollars every year. And like I said before, it's like, this is not for better. For worse. That'd be for worse. This is not a corner of the world in which funding is abundant. If you want to do companion, animal, nutritional science research, you don't, you can't just like in the same way that, uh, uh, interest about a vaccine can go to the national interest at national institutes of health. It's not like that on this side, you've got, there's not as much money available. It's a drop in the bucket of what's comparable to human medical research. And so if you want that money, you've got very few places you can go. Morris is one of the few places you can go. And Morris, like I would, I would say is a, essentially the non-prime, it's the equivalent of the Trump foundation for Donald Trump. Trump foundation is a nonprofit organization. Yay. Good thing. Except for the fact that it's controlled by people who have a direct profit incentive, very similar type thing. Yeah. And I think you also had a point to terms of like the Hills reps and how they're like directly tied to the board as well. So they're out in the community and it's just, again, that it's, I always think of it like the, the investigation and the TV shows and the movies where it's like the red string is tight, everywhere. No. With the Morris animal foundation, I had no idea until you showed me the website, you're like click these links. And I was prepping for this podcast and it's it's right there. It's not that they are hiding anything there. Like you said, they're required to file all these taxes and documents and disclose everything. It just, yeah. It's just like, I realize it is much more the case that it's just become so normalized that it's just such a feature of the environment. If you're a veterinarian that you just don't question the absurdity of it, that's much more the case than an effort to like TRO truly cover your tracks. It's not like I've discovered for the first time ever that Hills is playing a role in influencing your veteran. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not how it goes. How it goes is it's just been so pervasive that it's just the norm and you just kind of don't have people going, wait, is this water? This is water. That type of thing. So we're re we're going to run out of time here as soon, but we've covered, right? If you're a veterinary student we've covered, if your, um, clinical vet and you're selling Hill's products, but there's one other like domain at Whitney through which veterinarians are taught about nutritional science topics. I want to cover the role that big kill will plays at those. And that's in what are called continuing education courses. So in order to practice veterinary medicine, again, I know the analogy from the legal world, from having been a part of it. You've got to stay up to date on the latest developments in your profession, right? That's like in order to practice, you got to have a license in the world of lawyers is you got to pass the bar and you gotta be licensed to practice veterinary medicine in your state as well. And one of the requirements for having an active license for the state saying, yeah, you can do this. You can provide veterinary care to animals in our state is you've got to complete a sufficient amount of continuing education. Every year. The scientific record changes year to year, new studies are done and we learn the community, generally learns new things, whether it's in the legal domain or in the scientific domain. And by having a requirement that vets have to take a certain amount of continuing education. Huge, sir, ensure that they're kept up to date with the latest developments. Um, and so as my St Bernard barks loudly, let me see if I can make, I guess, is this an occupational hazard of having a Yeah, no, it's, um, right. He's just, he thought you were taking him to the vet. That's all. Um, and I think it's important to note here of the intent of these continuing education courses. Uh, so for example, like the ABMA website, which I have pulled up right now, for those watching the video, I'll make sure it's linked in the show notes. So it's new techniques, research and trends emerge constantly, you know, just making sure these vets are on top of everything basically for the scientific record. So I think that's just important to note of there isn't intent. So we'll kind of walk through the actual interpretation and execution of these by these big companies or through sponsorships, Right? And so the take home point is basically the same one that emerges from looking at how veterinary students are taught about nutritional science topics, which is that through direct means and through indirect intermediate means the big kibble companies play a huge role in shaping what's taught here. So intro you've got the AVMs website pulled up right now. That's the American veterinary medical association, the most legit veterinary professional organization on the planet. And this is there. They offer continuing education courses that you can just get your CE and an online format directly from the ABMA. But when you scroll down to the funding component of it, you can see that both boom Hills Royal Canin, along with what amount, what are basically, um, uh, pharmaceutical like veterinary pharmaceutical companies provide the funding for these courses to be created to such a degree that they get called out by name directly on the company's website or on the organization's website. So that's the equivalent of the Morris animal foundation acting on Hill's behalf to fund research. That's being done at Tufts university, right? The other way that you can see the fingerprints of big kibble all over the continuing education curriculum that's being taught to veterinarians is through direct. They don't even try to intermediate it. It's just direct. You need your vet. You need CE come directly to the source Hills free. Uh, I, I have been, uh, that I've got, this is an example of some written material that I have received from the pre COVID era at a Hill's funded, um, CE event, where you go, we got free lunches. We got a discussion of purportedly about the latest developments in the scientific community. But I mean, like, it couldn't be, this is, I mean, it's just sales material. It's just a rundown of different Hill's products and information that makes them special in the eyes of Hill's pet nutrition. And so, you know, this, I actually don't see the word free on this. I don't know if this is a paid thing or not. Yeah. There you go. Yes. And oftentimes, uh, well I think you attend, well, you've attended quite a few of these, but the rep is there too, um, hosting or producing, I guess the, the CE course of introducing themselves and then kind of moving into the subject or handing it over to the host. But yeah. I mean, it's, there's no hiding it. I agree. This is probably the most forward of the big kibble intervention and bias. Yeah. But it's just, again, it's like, just do the analogy. Just think how outraged, if it was like the McDonald's continuing medical education course, this is all focused on fries and learn about fries. And it's like, it's the same. It's just, that is normal in this weird little industry. And I also think it's a little ridiculous that the big one that they're calling all our attention to right now, the one that just took place has special. Co-hosts Stacy Santee, and a performance by Las Vegas, magician, comedian Piff, the magic dragon. This doesn't speak particularly highly of the, um, rigor and sophistication and seriousness of the program, but far be it for me to tell them to run the, run their stuff. But yeah, I mean, I, you know, I, I have been to more of these than I care to talk about, but I recount the direct experience in the book. And like you said, there were two reps from Hill's, they're both full-time employees, one's a veterinarian. One is sales rep, no veterinary information whatsoever. They receive basically equal billing. Like the rep basically was like, everybody already knew him. His name is Brady. Like everybody that was there at the clinic that I was attending through was like, he like introduced himself, like, well, you all know me already. I'm your friendly neighborhood. Uh, you know, it's me Brady. And he gave just as much information at the talk as a doctor, his name's in the book. And I can't remember off the top of my head. Um, so anyway, that's the, He just, it's a healthy skepticism, but just moreover the absurdity, when you look, when you try to fit it into another industry, like think of this, if it was in the medical field, the human medical field, and if, uh, you know, the Coca-Cola rock was like, Hey guys, are you guys ready to install a vending machine? And you're Like, Wait, why are you here? Like, that would make everyone uncomfortable, but this is just a prominent practice that has been going on for a year. And like, and in order to make it, I'll make it, this is, uh, everything we've done so far as I sit with my like lap full of textbooks, right. Is, is like, this is how things take place right now or how they've taken place in the past, you know, correcting for this. Like if you're a veterinarian and you're listening to this, you might well be saying something to the effect of, okay, well this is all valid, but I that's what I've got it's that or nothing. And they're kind of, right. Like I said, at the beginning of the show, the alternative is piecing together the record for yourself at the moment to solve for this over the long term alternative non-biased sources of funding needs to be developed. And we probably will be as we could, but we certainly will be devoting a show towards potential solutions to this and what we can do and what listeners for the show can do to help improve this situation. Cause you're anyone that's whose reaction is well it's this or nothing is right there. Right? It's a bad situation. No doubt about it. Like it's not, if it's just you can't, uh, you can't be satisfied. You can't just go, well, look, I've either got the information Hills is teaching me or I've got nothing and I'm going to just accept that situation. It's like, we have to work to improve the situation because you can't just say, well, I'm gonna learn about lung cancer from the tobacco company. Cause nobody else is gonna teach me anything about it. That's not an acceptable situation. Yeah. And I think at one point you had this really good. Uh, I was like, I think it was from you. And you were saying that it was like the more that smoke camels, like that took, you know, roughly 50 years to fully unravel, Everybody Looked back and it was like, Oh yeah, the like the surgeon General's report on. So that's a top doctor in the country put out this big monster report that received all this national fanfare in the mid 1950s on for the first time on the links between smoking and lung cancer smoking been, become hugely popular. By that point, major thing, surgeon general of the United States stands up, says, look, we did all this research and we've determined that smoking causes lung cancer. It took three decades from that point for smoking rates in the United States to begin to decline. So like, even if tomorrow morning we could totally change the system through which this like information environment, all the problems we're highlighting here, even then, it's going to take for forever for the substantive information to trickle down through the community and eventually reach like the folks that matter and kind of change perspectives on a meaningful scale. So I've got a law, it's a law. It's a good thing that you and I are such young people that we've got a long professional life ahead of us that I just voluntarily shaved my head. I'm not age induced baldness. I Assure you. Of Course not, of course not. I have a long career ahead of me. We'll be fighting the good fight. And we will do a future show about actual, tangible steps that we're taking to try to improve the, uh, this situation. Because I think there's stuff that can be done and I think it can move the needle. I agree. That is a great point to end on. The season of hope is hopefully the season of change is right around the corner and it's just, it has to be got of this organized movement. So yeah. Thank you for listening. Step is admitting there's a problem, right? That's it. In order to fix anything like that? Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, what, what a great episode, thank you for listening until next time when we'll be on our third episode of more vet smoked camels, we hope you liked the series. If you have any suggestions for other topics related to the veterinary community or education or anything related to this topic, feel free to hit us up in the email contact or on our website in the show notes until next time. Thanks Jen.