I'm sorry but I most veterinarians get more than "two weeks of nutrition education". I also highly doubt that it's sponsored by any company. Universities just don't work that way. If anyone has proof that all nutrition courses in the US (worldwide?) are sponsored by a pet food company, I'd really like to see that.
I Googled vet school curriculum and it wasn't too hard to find nutrition courses in vet schools.
NC University -
VMB 965 - Veterinary Nutritional Health – The role of nutrition in veterinary medicine. Development, diagnosis and prevention of nutritional problems in a variety of species will be discussed, frequently employing a comparative approach. 2 semester hours.
I found a few others that have similar courses on nutrition. Obviously, these courses cover more than just feline nutrition, but a lot of the information is relevant to all species (an amino acid is an amino acid after all
). As I said before, there's a lot no one knows. I don't expect universities to teach vets things that are not evidence-based.
So, vets are expected to know that cats are obligate carnivores and don't requite grain as part of their diet. They should know about common deficiencies and what they can cause. These are things that are known and backed up by scientific literature. Anything more complicated - such as nutrition for specific medical conditions - is probably left for nutritional experts (there are those out there).
As far as saying that grain is harmful or that feeding wet is superior to feeding dry food? I'm sorry for the blasphemy, but at this point, this is an educated guess at best. Nobody knows and there's no sufficient scientific evidence to back these claims, despite what some sites say. I really don't see why vets should propagate any information that isn't evidence-based. I'd actually be quite upset if my vet were to share guesses and half-truths as fact.
As for the food companies, like Dr. Cline says in her lecture, they want to generate sales by pleasing their customers. If customers want grain-free, they will adapt and sell grain-free products. Customers want canned or raw? They'll sell you whatever you want for the right price and the pet food industry is doing just that these days - adapting to the customers' wishes. IMO, their - very clear - commercial interests are really not the issue here. (And just to clarify, no pet food company sponsors TCS
).
I Googled vet school curriculum and it wasn't too hard to find nutrition courses in vet schools.
NC University -
VMB 965 - Veterinary Nutritional Health – The role of nutrition in veterinary medicine. Development, diagnosis and prevention of nutritional problems in a variety of species will be discussed, frequently employing a comparative approach. 2 semester hours.
I found a few others that have similar courses on nutrition. Obviously, these courses cover more than just feline nutrition, but a lot of the information is relevant to all species (an amino acid is an amino acid after all
So, vets are expected to know that cats are obligate carnivores and don't requite grain as part of their diet. They should know about common deficiencies and what they can cause. These are things that are known and backed up by scientific literature. Anything more complicated - such as nutrition for specific medical conditions - is probably left for nutritional experts (there are those out there).
As far as saying that grain is harmful or that feeding wet is superior to feeding dry food? I'm sorry for the blasphemy, but at this point, this is an educated guess at best. Nobody knows and there's no sufficient scientific evidence to back these claims, despite what some sites say. I really don't see why vets should propagate any information that isn't evidence-based. I'd actually be quite upset if my vet were to share guesses and half-truths as fact.
As for the food companies, like Dr. Cline says in her lecture, they want to generate sales by pleasing their customers. If customers want grain-free, they will adapt and sell grain-free products. Customers want canned or raw? They'll sell you whatever you want for the right price and the pet food industry is doing just that these days - adapting to the customers' wishes. IMO, their - very clear - commercial interests are really not the issue here. (And just to clarify, no pet food company sponsors TCS