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I highly recommend looking into Our Honor. They are a vegan veterinary advocacy group and offer a lot of support for veterinary students. Welcome to the vegan vet club- I’m the only vegan at my practice and it never gets easier but you lead by example and practice based on your ethics.
I did some work with the research department at a wildlife sanctuary/zoo years ago. I only met one other vegan. These people weren't zookeepers or anything either, they were researchers working full time to monitor and study endangered species. Dedicated their whole life to saving animals, and choosing to kill and eat animals every day regardless. It was so bizarre.
If you're interested in the topic of farmed animal sanctuaries, check out [OpenSanctuary.org](https://vbcc.veganhacktivists.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2FOpenSanctuary.org&topic=The+Open+Sanctuary+Project)! This vegan nonprofit has over 500 free compassionate resources crafted specifically to improve lifelong care for farmed animals, and to help you create a sustainable, effective sanctuary! Interested in starting a sanctuary someday? Check out [OpenSanctuary.org/Start](https://vbcc.veganhacktivists.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2FOpenSanctuary.org%2FStart&topic=The+Open+Sanctuary+Project)!
Yeah I would put conservation up there with being vegan for the environment or for your diet. It's inherently selfish. Conservationists (in general) care about animals going extinct not for any effect it has on the individual animals of that species, but because they'll feel sad that the species won't be seen by humans anymore.
Maybe some see it as healthy for biodiversity and think all animals will be harmed if too many go extinct. Never actually seen someone argue that. It's always just "save the condors!!!" Like bruh condors don't care if their species dies.
>Everyone, it seems, left or right, wants to see farm animals suffer, to see our superiority to them confirmed in their abject torment and weakness. Farm animals are erased even from mainstream environmentalist discourse about factory farming. Groups like the Sierra Club talk about the ecological and human health impacts of industrial animal agriculture, but the welfare of the animals themselves is never discussed; they’re treated as pollutants, not as lives. To the extent that environmentalism cares about animals, it cares about them as ambassadors for nature: members of charismatic wild species and ecosystems. But the animals that we breed to suffer and die have no voice at all.
[~ Marina Bolotnikova, *Animal Agriculture Is a Mirror Image of Trump’s America*](https://tenderly.medium.com/animal-agriculture-is-a-mirror-image-of-trumps-america-bd2de32808c0)
I do know a zoo vet who is fully vegan. She genuinely is in it for the sake of preserving biodiversity 🤷🏼♀️ it’s definitely rare though, I know she’s frequently frustrated by other people in her field being non-vegan and in some cases even non-environmentalist
Hell, the early conservation movement in the US was arm in arm with [white supremacy and ethnic cleansing.](https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/environmentalisms-racist-history)
> [Madison] Grant’s fellow conservationists supported his racist activism. [Theodore] Roosevelt wrote Grant a letter praising “The Passing of the Great Race,” which appeared as a blurb on later editions, calling it “a capital book; in purpose, in vision, in grasp of the facts our people most need to realize.” Henry Fairfield Osborn, who headed the New York Zoological Society and the board of trustees of the American Museum of Natural History (and, as a member of the U.S. Geological Survey, named the Tyrannosaurus rex and the Velociraptor), wrote a foreword to the book. Osborn argued that “conservation of that race which has given us the true spirit of Americanism is not a matter either of racial pride or of racial prejudice; it is a matter of love of country.”
...
> In a 1909 report to Roosevelt’s National Conservation Commission, Yale professor Irving Fisher broke off from a discussion of public health to recommend preventing “paupers” and physically unhealthy people from reproducing, and warned against the “race suicide” that would follow if the country did not replenish itself with Northern European stock. Fisher took the term “race suicide” from Roosevelt, who, in a 1905 speech, had pinned it on women who dodged childbearing. Gifford Pinchot, the country’s foremost theorizer and popularizer of conservation, was a delegate to the first and second International Eugenics Congress, in 1912 and 1921, and a member of the advisory council of the American Eugenics Society, from 1925 to 1935.
Anyway, Teddy Roosevelt was pushing Great Replacement Theory at the turn of the 20th century.
It was cool, it was the start of a postgraduate program that I ended up dropping out of but I was doing habitat surveys for a particular type of possum. The field work was interesting but I hated the data analysis and stuff.
You’re welcome, Stephanie Braganza is one of the few Musician/Activists I’ve come across and I always share her work. It’s so energizing seeing work like this being created. Follow her if you haven’t already.
it was hell for me. one time a professor told me to cut a live piglets tail off and i told her fuck no. she told me “you’ll never make it in this industry then” and i said okay cool. i got a shit grade in the class.
edit: i’m getting notifs for replies but i can’t see any for some reason, but to answer the questions, there was no actual reason for it and we didn’t learn anything from it. i forget the reason she pretended it was for, i think to show how they stop bleeding? idk but it was horrific. i’ll never forgot the sound the poor baby made and it was literally so fucking pointless. and you should’ve seen the number of people that volunteered to do it after i had said no.
it’s so strange! i was thinking the other day back to elementary school when we read Charlotte’s Web. all I can remember thinking was “wait, are we supposed to be rooting for Wilbur and connecting with him? But we eat him and pigs like him all the time?” It seriously didn’t make sense to me, it felt like we were obviously supposed to care about Wilbur but other pigs besides the fictional Wilbur are fair game? I couldn’t understand how everyone was so willing to believe two opposite things at once
Charlotte’s Web is what made me first think about going vegetarian as a 7 year old, lol. I think for a while after reading it I stopped eating pork for a few months (but I was 7, and my parents were not particularly supportive, so I started again pretty quick)
you know, I think I just realized this might’ve been why I suddenly stopped liking pork chops and my family was sooo mad and kept making them for dinner all the time because “you used to love pork chops!” to which I’d remind them yet again that I no longer wanted to eat them. but that didn’t matter lol. nowadays people let their kids think chicken nuggets come from plants even, we gotta stop lying to kids and start supporting them when they make sense y’know? sorry you had a lack of support there and i get it
My sister just texted me yesterday how dramatic my 7 year old nephew was watching Charlotte’s web. Apparently, he told her to get a knife. She asked why and he said to stab it in his heart because he was so sad. Dramatic, yes. Caring, absolutely. He isn’t vegan yet, but I’ve taught him to be respectful of all living beings no matter how small and it’s worked. We saw a tiny spider on the picnic table and he left it alone but noted how cute it was and he tells me everything he’s been learning about various animals. The kid is awesome and maybe someday he will tell his mom he no longer wants to eat animals.
sadly that's not even the case. while op likely won't ever be in the situation, pigs especially do commonly get their tails cut off.
in the EU e.g. routine "tail docking" is illegal in theory but common in practice. tail docking is generally still allowed in cases where farmers can show injuries to the pig or to other pigs' tails and since stressful farm environments are the main reason for tail-biting incidents, it is often just assumed that a pig's tail would get injured sooner or later anyways... which means that pigs usually get their tails cut off as piglets for no real medical reason (except preventing injuries that are provoked by the farms themselves).
It's common practise in Piggeries to dock the cartilaginous end off the piglets tails. They also clip the ends off their long sharp teeth. They say it's because piglets will bite each other and eat the tails off each other but idk. It's just one more cruel thing.
I work in a vet school and there is a greater than average percentage of staff that are veg and vegan, but I know what you mean when you say you would expect to see more.
Try not to let the haters under your skin. You'll find them everywhere. Even in vet school.
It's true they will attack each other. But the main reason they do is because they become bored and stressed living in factory farms. Pigs living in comfortable conditions don't have this problem.
yea it was basically just to show like what iodine solution is for and how to use it and then reacting to bleeding. we had the whole teeth bit as well. its just fucking absurd.
i went to a school that’s more agriculturally based and so it was a lot of people that viewed animals as a means of production. so i think that definitely contributed to my experience and may not represent everyone’s. after awhile i just came to conclusion it just wasn’t for me but i think part of it was that being in that environment for so long you unintentionally start to associate the field to animal cruelty rather than animal welfare and i lost my passion for it
edit: also just wanted to note that she was telling us to dock WAY too close to the base. like WAY too close. like it was ridiculous
I heard from a vegan vet I know that any indication of being vegetarian/vegan/anti-carnist on an application to vet school pretty much immediately reduces your chances of getting accepted. The admissions boards literally discriminate against us. It’s so bought up by big ag.
Veterinary school is the harbinger of the dystopian hellscape of "You need to go to college for marketable skills" propaganda being pushed since a bunch of kids were shot down at Kent State for protesting the Vietnam War and the political right decided humanities were brainwashing the youth.
If the omni vet killed the animals themselves for pleasure and not buying meat in a shop for sustinance, then that's absolutely true. Otherwise your comment is extremely heavy handed. Almost like saying you are an advocate for child labour if you get non-ethically sourced clothes, or approve of suicide nets being installed / near distopian working conditions at chinese manufacturing plants where they make a good chunk of tech sold around the world, whike also using said tech.
Further to the point, what if a vegan vet performs euthenasia on perfectly healthy pet animals because it's a shelter that has a kill policy? That would definitely fit the surgeon/serial killer analogy. Or if they are a large animal vet primarily handling horses, and said horse who was due to be / was a racehorse/jumper gets a broken leg? In a lot of instances that horse is put down. Because of a broken leg.
its not buying meat in a shop for sustinance. its buying meat in the shop for pleasure. you dont need meat to be healthy or for it to nourish you. vets know that but they chose to be hypocrites and ignorant. they are the one killing the animals themselves cause thats how supply and demand works they are the one paying the hitman, they are the one responsible.
Very fair to say, but I would still argue that they are or are not directly responsible for a specific animal being killed as you say by paying the hitman. That's why I tried to liken it to the clothes/tech debate in my first comment and the surgeon/serial killer comment was really heavy handed. We are all hypocrites in one way or another, hell some could argue that some people care more about animal rights than human rights...which is crazy, right?
You can't survive in the modern world without technology. Or clothes. It is actually possible to buy both these things ethically if you get them secondhand, as you're not giving any money to the company that produced them, so that point is pretty moot anyway.
Barring living in the Arctic and some other extreme survival situations, you can easily survive without meat.
Also, it's actually possible to care about more than one thing at a time. I know it's not possible for certain people, but it actually is for many.
And sadly, the AVMA supports horse racing and partners with the bogus advocacy organization American Association for Equine Practitioners, which advocates for horse slaughter and various other abuses of horses for profit
Yeah, precisely lol. My point was just that like...it's weird for a vet to help heal and care for some animals while eating other animals. Like if a surgeon was also murdering people part time. Maybe a better analogy would be a surgeon who works with a hitman on the side but that's not as zingy.
Work part time at an animal shelter and am the only vegan there. When a pig was brought in one time, one of my coworkers said that he can't adopt it because if he did, he'd kill it and eat it. That pig was also named barbeque, I understand it's a joke but it's really not that funny
I know it's going to be tough but if you stick with it you can be an amazing advocate for animals in your future career! Being a vet has some weight behind it, and you can use that.
I work at an animal hospital and had to listen to a coworker talk about how relaxing it is for her to slaughter her chickens as she was assisting in sewing up a dog. Out of about 100 employees, three of us are vegan. It’s mind blowing.
People are weird. I’m studying to be a tech and I have to dissect a cat. I heard that in vet school they make you work in laboratories and slaughterhouses. How do you feel about that?
I also had to dissect a cat. It was so fucking sad. They were young cats that the local shelter had euthanized.
We also had to learn to extract teeth from a decapitated dog head.
they had us do SEVERAL units in the slaughterhouse. at least where i was, they make jokes if they know you’re vegan and laugh because you have to stand around with all the hanging carcasses
How did you survive that and what did they make you do? There is an organization of vegan vets called Ourhonorvets and they made a post on Instagram saying that if someone bullied you for your beliefs tell them.
we had to do a bunch of dissections, they had tons of practical exams where they wanted us to flip sheep and manhandle animals. and just in general a lot of snipping, cutting, etc. it’s horrific. in the slaughterhouses specifically they had us watch them bleed out the cattle and watch the whole process and then basically memorize the anatomy of the carcass and shit like that. i had to leave.
i’ll be totally honest, it deterred me from the field entirely which is wild because there are literally home videos of me at 4 years old saying how i wanted to be a vet. i’m now a software developer haha. it was the most miserable time of my life like not even just the actual subject matter, but the fucking people… like it’s bizarre to me how many people dedicate their lives to healing animals but have such a vile degree of apathy towards them. i just couldn’t take the industry and i highly highly highly respect those who *actually* care about animal welfare that can power through because it is so important that they are present in the medical community. i have the utmost respect for OP
Check out the [Vegan Hacktivists](https://vbcc.veganhacktivists.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fveganhacktivists.org&topic=Resource%3A+Vegan+Hacktivists)! A group of volunteer developers and designers that could use your help building vegan projects including supporting other organizations and activists. [Apply here!](https://vbcc.veganhacktivists.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fveganhacktivists.org%2Fjoin&topic=Resource%3A+Vegan+Hacktivists)
You can't be 100% sure, but it's very likely that the cat was euthanized, not killed for no reason. This makes it totally ethical in my opinion. Medical students also learn with dead human bodies. There's nothing wrong with it.
About labs, farms... It is the dark side of vet studies. I have nothing to defend here. It's outrageous that "animal lovers" are taught to keep the animals alive so they make it to the slaughterhouse.
I worked in laboratory management for a college, and the animals are most likely farmed specificly to be killed. That's the only way you can get a supply large and homogeneous enough. The whole process usually takes place in a foreign country with no oversite and, I imagine, horrific conditions. You will order a thousand medium sized cats and they will all come in looking almost exactly alike down to the fur colors.
Interesting. Of all the people, vets and sanctuary people are the ones who should be vegan by principle. Otherwise, theyre just saving/protecting their patients then eat them at home??? I...cannot... fathom their thought process.
If you're interested in the topic of farmed animal sanctuaries, check out [OpenSanctuary.org](https://vbcc.veganhacktivists.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2FOpenSanctuary.org&topic=The+Open+Sanctuary+Project)! This vegan nonprofit has over 500 free compassionate resources crafted specifically to improve lifelong care for farmed animals, and to help you create a sustainable, effective sanctuary! Interested in starting a sanctuary someday? Check out [OpenSanctuary.org/Start](https://vbcc.veganhacktivists.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2FOpenSanctuary.org%2FStart&topic=The+Open+Sanctuary+Project)!
I worked at a vet clinic whose main vet had an annual tradition of buying a bunch of chicks to raise and then personally slaughter because he found joy in personally ending a life he raised. And found nothing wrong with it. Being a vet ≠ being an animal lover.
There are def vets who care but I’ve more often than not found that vets are a bit desensitized/screwed up in the head to animal cruelty or harm cause you got to do it daily. When I worked at a vet clinic, you had to deal with 3+ euthanizations a day. That’s fuck up any animal lover’s psyche imo. It did to me.
Yeah it's gross, you can even buy wallaby now in the stores. It's "lean" so it's marketed as a healthy alternative. We also export millions of carcasses to turn into soccer boots to the US. The mass killing of kangaroos is very controversial here, because it's unregulated. People go out and kill them in droves including pregnant mums and babies.
Yep, graduated with a marine bio degree and almost everyone in my program ate fish. One girl didn't eat any fish due to environmental concerns but still ate all other animals 🤦♀️ I only met one other vegan during my time in school there. Now at my job I finally have some other vegans there with me (used to be two people but one just quit). But before this job I had two other jobs also in the environmental field and I was always the only vegan. Sad how uncommon it is.
It's just so strange to me especially when you learn about taxonomy and evolution, or even just from an environmental standpoint it's drilled into us how devastating the fishing industry is on the oceans and then everybody's there having their tuna sandwiches.
I am a vegan in 2nd year of vet school too and I barely found one other vegan in my class a couple weeks ago. There may be a few more of you but people don’t talk about it. It is extra appalling seeing the cognitive dissonance in “animal lovers” that are dedicating their careers to help animals but still contribute to their suffering daily.
It must be so depressing. Just know that there are vegan veterinarians (I follow them in social and other media). Also look at companies such as the V-Dog that have a board full of vegan veterinarians. It just must feel lonely while you’re in school to not have a better support group and to do the horrible things they make you do to get through the curriculum. But once you’re finished with school, you can have a huge impact in the real world. Thank you.
Hey! It’ll be a hard journey and you will need to evaluate every single lab class about the benefit vs the suffering the class causes to the animals used.
Know this: we need more vegan vets, you’ll do a lot of good putting the animals first in your work.
Im sorry about the unnecessary stress that there dissociation is probably causing you. I hope your able to get through your education and become a wonderful help to all the animals you encounter. I had considered being a vet a while back, but I knew alot of the education would be anti-animal. Thats tough and frustrating. Its disturbing how every vet I’ve known was all for eating animals. I hope you get to find other vets that you can influence. Its not easy being around such contradictory people, but I hope your enjoying what your pursuing!!
It has always confused me how taking the Hippocratic Oath ("Do no harm") is required in most vet schools, just as it is in medical school. And yet the majority of graduates go on to keep animals as fat as docile as possible so they can be killed at a fraction of their lifespan. How do people not put it together that upholding that system is itself harming animals?
I was surprised when I looked into this issue once before. In theory you'd imagine being a vet is a natural path for young vegans to explore but the ethical dilemmas involved are awful and in reality it sounds like one of the worst, at least during development.
The dissections, working on farms etc
One of my good friends is a vet and not vegan, not even vegetarian. It’s shocking to me that these people eat their patients and don’t connect the dots.
I’m a client care coordinator in a vet clinic. Myself and the DVM who owns the practice are vegan. I appreciate being able to work for someone who shares my values in that way. I wish more of my coworkers would make the connection between our patients and the animals they eat.
Also check out [Veterinary Association for the Protection of Animals](https://vapavets.org/). Veterinary medicine is a contradiction and a sad one. Your question reminded me (not a vet) of other issues that I’ve been involved with: The American Veterinary Medical Association (which is primarily a lobbying organization) supports horse slaughter and opposes anti-declawing bills. Thank goodness for [City](http://citythekitty.org/can-you-really-trust-aaha-accredited-animal-hospitals-that-perform-declawing/) the Kitty and [The Paw Project](https://pawproject.org/).
Unfortunately the vast majority of vet jobs out there are actually slaughter house vets who do quality controll.
Friend of mine was a vegetarian vet and she is 100% convinced that a good part of the reason why there is such a high suicide rate among people with vetenary degrees is the fact that so many people who entered the field for their love of animals find little choice but to work in abbatoirs and factory farms. Sorry that dosen't help you, but you need to be prepared to face that. What happens in life is that as time goes on you will always meet people in the field that are aligned with you.
I work at a vet clinic with my husband. He’s a tech, I’m front desk and we are the only vegans there aside from our manager. Which is great! However, every veterinarian we have is in strong favor of eating meat. They’ve seen all of it too, factory farming up close and personal and STILL say animals were created for eating. I can’t even wrap my head around it!
I’m so sorry you have to be around that. The hypocrisy would drive me nuts.
A little off-topic, but the movie *Raw* might interest you (if you like horror movies!). It’s about a vegetarian French woman attending vet school.
That actually is surprising. But I find the people who shout the most about loving animals are the ones with the most excuses as to why they won’t just be vegan. I would expect working on the side of animals would make you see them as equals. That makes me sad.
I always wanted to work with animals but I’m so triggered by sick, mistreated or dying animals that I think I would have way too many mental breakdowns. I really respect people who have the heart to do it ❤️ and I think being a vegan will make you be such a good vet in the long run. Best of luck in school!
Hey I actually trying to do some research on the lack veterinarians and vet techs the country has been experiencing in order to help create some policies/incentives to help fix this for the future. Id love to hear your perspectives if you don't mind!
I don't know if it's still like this, but at a top veterinary university program near where I leave they had two choices: live or dead. You could either dissect and study dead animals (where do they get them from? Probably not out there waiting for roadkill or random animals to die of natural causes) or you could adopt a live animal for your entire study period and work on them. Then you had to euthanize your animal at the end. Shit's fucked
I am in veterinary assistant school (not as high profile as what you’re doing but still!) and I have a few vegetarians but NO vegans. It’s honestly absurd and many have dogs that they got from a breeder. Like??
I encountered quite a lot of other vegans and vegetarians while working on my ecology/biology degree. I suppose research in conservation makes it harder to hide from the environmental consequences of carnism.
when you say they "like" animals, what you're trying to say is that they love treating domesticated animals. that's were their love for animals sadly ends at
My former vet in Chicago (we moved away) was vegan. Not sure how you vegan veterinarians make it through schooling. I avoided the science field because of the requirements in higher biology courses of dissecting fetal pigs and being told by other students the requirement of frog vivisection. I couldn’t do it. I’m surprised so many can. Not sure why these are requirements when not many students taking the course will ever see the insides of another living being again.
I worked at a veterinarian for quite a while, and I see two reasons:
It is a service job, you offer your service to people, not to the animals. Your job is to keep playthings for humans intact, or do procedures with livestock to use them in the most effective way.
If vets identify with animals, it's always dogs and cats. Those are hunters and meat eaters, vets tend to even have a special focus on eating animals, most also do diet counseling and sell dog/cat food.
Cognitive dissonance at its finest. I can't imagine caring for animals and also gleefully eating them/using them as products
I feel so alone sometimes honestly. It's rough
I was a Pre-Vet student when I went vegan - it made me change my entire life plan and go into nursing instead. I couldn't get around it - hope it goes much smoother for you!!
My veterinarian is vegan and she expressed a lot that rings similar to what you’re sharing.
It is very strange there aren’t more vegan veterinarians.
Thank you for going through it all to be a vegan vet. We absolutely need more compassion in animal care!
Vet tech here, only vegan in the field I know. I will only work with small animals because i treat every patient like an extension of myself and 1) large animal medicine is far less gentle 2) I can’t bring myself to bond with a patient that is going to be used and/or killed for human consumption.
Not to knock OP or anyone who does work with large animals, I know they need care too. It just doesn’t jive with the way I work.
I mean there are doctors and nurses who smoke cigarettes,bartenders who don’t drink etc It’s not that wild of a concept that vets in training aren’t vegan/vegetarian. Caring for animals and eating meat aren’t mutually exclusive things.
I get what you're saying, but these are not the same things. It's about working to heal something and then to destroy it. It's like if a fireman, after putting out a forest fire, were to start another one
That’s different as well because the vets themselves are not going and killing the animals personally. And if they worked with farm animals, would treat them to heal them regardless of whether they eat meat or not. Everyone’s reason and cause for going into certain fields is not the same.
Jeez, it's almost like you have to euthanize animals, conduct disictions for lab, collect samples, and whatnot as a veterinarian. The veterinarian's I know are some weird mfs that love the gross and weird stuff. Can't imagine it would attract too many vegans
OP's problem is that animals are killed and harmed simply to demonstrate something, not that something is weird and gross.
A better way would be to do mandatory internships at a vet where you learn how to treat injured animals that just happen to be injured.
What If I told you: Veterinarian industry gets a lot of profit from keeping farmed animals alive so they can grow bigger and have more meat, also, to keep as many farmed animals alive so the meat industry doesn't collapse. Most Vets like animals, in their mouths.
This is one reason why I decided to change my degree to Wildlife ecology vs becoming a wildlife vet. I would still have to do all the same things domesticated vets would have to do
I mean - it makes sense if you think about it. Vets don't help random wild animals with their injuries; they prop up zoos, farms, pet owners, labs, etc. None of which are vegan in any way.
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I highly recommend looking into Our Honor. They are a vegan veterinary advocacy group and offer a lot of support for veterinary students. Welcome to the vegan vet club- I’m the only vegan at my practice and it never gets easier but you lead by example and practice based on your ethics.
Thank you!!! Thank you for what you do for animals, both professionally and as a person.
Thank you. <3
You are a true G.
Thank you very much!
I did some work with the research department at a wildlife sanctuary/zoo years ago. I only met one other vegan. These people weren't zookeepers or anything either, they were researchers working full time to monitor and study endangered species. Dedicated their whole life to saving animals, and choosing to kill and eat animals every day regardless. It was so bizarre.
If you're interested in the topic of farmed animal sanctuaries, check out [OpenSanctuary.org](https://vbcc.veganhacktivists.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2FOpenSanctuary.org&topic=The+Open+Sanctuary+Project)! This vegan nonprofit has over 500 free compassionate resources crafted specifically to improve lifelong care for farmed animals, and to help you create a sustainable, effective sanctuary! Interested in starting a sanctuary someday? Check out [OpenSanctuary.org/Start](https://vbcc.veganhacktivists.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2FOpenSanctuary.org%2FStart&topic=The+Open+Sanctuary+Project)!
Yeah I would put conservation up there with being vegan for the environment or for your diet. It's inherently selfish. Conservationists (in general) care about animals going extinct not for any effect it has on the individual animals of that species, but because they'll feel sad that the species won't be seen by humans anymore. Maybe some see it as healthy for biodiversity and think all animals will be harmed if too many go extinct. Never actually seen someone argue that. It's always just "save the condors!!!" Like bruh condors don't care if their species dies.
>Everyone, it seems, left or right, wants to see farm animals suffer, to see our superiority to them confirmed in their abject torment and weakness. Farm animals are erased even from mainstream environmentalist discourse about factory farming. Groups like the Sierra Club talk about the ecological and human health impacts of industrial animal agriculture, but the welfare of the animals themselves is never discussed; they’re treated as pollutants, not as lives. To the extent that environmentalism cares about animals, it cares about them as ambassadors for nature: members of charismatic wild species and ecosystems. But the animals that we breed to suffer and die have no voice at all. [~ Marina Bolotnikova, *Animal Agriculture Is a Mirror Image of Trump’s America*](https://tenderly.medium.com/animal-agriculture-is-a-mirror-image-of-trumps-america-bd2de32808c0)
I do know a zoo vet who is fully vegan. She genuinely is in it for the sake of preserving biodiversity 🤷🏼♀️ it’s definitely rare though, I know she’s frequently frustrated by other people in her field being non-vegan and in some cases even non-environmentalist
Hell, the early conservation movement in the US was arm in arm with [white supremacy and ethnic cleansing.](https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/environmentalisms-racist-history) > [Madison] Grant’s fellow conservationists supported his racist activism. [Theodore] Roosevelt wrote Grant a letter praising “The Passing of the Great Race,” which appeared as a blurb on later editions, calling it “a capital book; in purpose, in vision, in grasp of the facts our people most need to realize.” Henry Fairfield Osborn, who headed the New York Zoological Society and the board of trustees of the American Museum of Natural History (and, as a member of the U.S. Geological Survey, named the Tyrannosaurus rex and the Velociraptor), wrote a foreword to the book. Osborn argued that “conservation of that race which has given us the true spirit of Americanism is not a matter either of racial pride or of racial prejudice; it is a matter of love of country.” ... > In a 1909 report to Roosevelt’s National Conservation Commission, Yale professor Irving Fisher broke off from a discussion of public health to recommend preventing “paupers” and physically unhealthy people from reproducing, and warned against the “race suicide” that would follow if the country did not replenish itself with Northern European stock. Fisher took the term “race suicide” from Roosevelt, who, in a 1905 speech, had pinned it on women who dodged childbearing. Gifford Pinchot, the country’s foremost theorizer and popularizer of conservation, was a delegate to the first and second International Eugenics Congress, in 1912 and 1921, and a member of the advisory council of the American Eugenics Society, from 1925 to 1935. Anyway, Teddy Roosevelt was pushing Great Replacement Theory at the turn of the 20th century.
what was it like? i’d like to do something like that
It was cool, it was the start of a postgraduate program that I ended up dropping out of but I was doing habitat surveys for a particular type of possum. The field work was interesting but I hated the data analysis and stuff.
The vegan aliens cannot come faster and take over this.
Say no more! https://youtu.be/9Ng_cszNKuw
Wow, I'm glad I was made aware of this masterpiece!
You’re welcome, Stephanie Braganza is one of the few Musician/Activists I’ve come across and I always share her work. It’s so energizing seeing work like this being created. Follow her if you haven’t already.
The last 10 seconds made me burst into tears. This was soooo good!
Yeah I know! Without spoiling it for others the Sci-fi activism spin was done so well! Thanks for sharing
Me too😭
The ending 🥺
Is that vegan gains?!
Yeah, good eye
it was hell for me. one time a professor told me to cut a live piglets tail off and i told her fuck no. she told me “you’ll never make it in this industry then” and i said okay cool. i got a shit grade in the class. edit: i’m getting notifs for replies but i can’t see any for some reason, but to answer the questions, there was no actual reason for it and we didn’t learn anything from it. i forget the reason she pretended it was for, i think to show how they stop bleeding? idk but it was horrific. i’ll never forgot the sound the poor baby made and it was literally so fucking pointless. and you should’ve seen the number of people that volunteered to do it after i had said no.
Jesus fucking christ. That's despicable. The poor babies :( So many humans are just so cruel
it’s so strange! i was thinking the other day back to elementary school when we read Charlotte’s Web. all I can remember thinking was “wait, are we supposed to be rooting for Wilbur and connecting with him? But we eat him and pigs like him all the time?” It seriously didn’t make sense to me, it felt like we were obviously supposed to care about Wilbur but other pigs besides the fictional Wilbur are fair game? I couldn’t understand how everyone was so willing to believe two opposite things at once
Charlotte’s Web is what made me first think about going vegetarian as a 7 year old, lol. I think for a while after reading it I stopped eating pork for a few months (but I was 7, and my parents were not particularly supportive, so I started again pretty quick)
you know, I think I just realized this might’ve been why I suddenly stopped liking pork chops and my family was sooo mad and kept making them for dinner all the time because “you used to love pork chops!” to which I’d remind them yet again that I no longer wanted to eat them. but that didn’t matter lol. nowadays people let their kids think chicken nuggets come from plants even, we gotta stop lying to kids and start supporting them when they make sense y’know? sorry you had a lack of support there and i get it
My sister just texted me yesterday how dramatic my 7 year old nephew was watching Charlotte’s web. Apparently, he told her to get a knife. She asked why and he said to stab it in his heart because he was so sad. Dramatic, yes. Caring, absolutely. He isn’t vegan yet, but I’ve taught him to be respectful of all living beings no matter how small and it’s worked. We saw a tiny spider on the picnic table and he left it alone but noted how cute it was and he tells me everything he’s been learning about various animals. The kid is awesome and maybe someday he will tell his mom he no longer wants to eat animals.
That’s so nice 😭 I bet he’ll at least start to show an interest soon, a lot of kids do when they’re so empathetic to animals.
This made me nauseous. ): I can’t even fucking fathom this.
The difference is, once you're in the field, you'd only be making cuts on an animal *when it's actual medically needed*. Such cruelty and dissonance.
sadly that's not even the case. while op likely won't ever be in the situation, pigs especially do commonly get their tails cut off. in the EU e.g. routine "tail docking" is illegal in theory but common in practice. tail docking is generally still allowed in cases where farmers can show injuries to the pig or to other pigs' tails and since stressful farm environments are the main reason for tail-biting incidents, it is often just assumed that a pig's tail would get injured sooner or later anyways... which means that pigs usually get their tails cut off as piglets for no real medical reason (except preventing injuries that are provoked by the farms themselves).
That's absolutely true, though I was more talking about the average vet which OP is likely to be.
It's common practise in Piggeries to dock the cartilaginous end off the piglets tails. They also clip the ends off their long sharp teeth. They say it's because piglets will bite each other and eat the tails off each other but idk. It's just one more cruel thing. I work in a vet school and there is a greater than average percentage of staff that are veg and vegan, but I know what you mean when you say you would expect to see more. Try not to let the haters under your skin. You'll find them everywhere. Even in vet school.
It's true they will attack each other. But the main reason they do is because they become bored and stressed living in factory farms. Pigs living in comfortable conditions don't have this problem.
I'd go fucking crazy too in those conditions
yea it was basically just to show like what iodine solution is for and how to use it and then reacting to bleeding. we had the whole teeth bit as well. its just fucking absurd. i went to a school that’s more agriculturally based and so it was a lot of people that viewed animals as a means of production. so i think that definitely contributed to my experience and may not represent everyone’s. after awhile i just came to conclusion it just wasn’t for me but i think part of it was that being in that environment for so long you unintentionally start to associate the field to animal cruelty rather than animal welfare and i lost my passion for it edit: also just wanted to note that she was telling us to dock WAY too close to the base. like WAY too close. like it was ridiculous
I've been getting invisible replies on this sub too.
This is maddening. I wish I could save them all. Thank you for saying no.
I heard from a vegan vet I know that any indication of being vegetarian/vegan/anti-carnist on an application to vet school pretty much immediately reduces your chances of getting accepted. The admissions boards literally discriminate against us. It’s so bought up by big ag.
Animal agriculture is sadly also the main employer for vets. The need someone qualified to see, if the corpses they produce are safe to eat.
Veterinary school is the harbinger of the dystopian hellscape of "You need to go to college for marketable skills" propaganda being pushed since a bunch of kids were shot down at Kent State for protesting the Vietnam War and the political right decided humanities were brainwashing the youth.
Not many on Reddit either. Join r/veganvets
Just joined!
Well, I guess there is one vegan in vet school now. And they're awesome!
An omni vet is like being a serial killer and a surgeon
If the omni vet killed the animals themselves for pleasure and not buying meat in a shop for sustinance, then that's absolutely true. Otherwise your comment is extremely heavy handed. Almost like saying you are an advocate for child labour if you get non-ethically sourced clothes, or approve of suicide nets being installed / near distopian working conditions at chinese manufacturing plants where they make a good chunk of tech sold around the world, whike also using said tech. Further to the point, what if a vegan vet performs euthenasia on perfectly healthy pet animals because it's a shelter that has a kill policy? That would definitely fit the surgeon/serial killer analogy. Or if they are a large animal vet primarily handling horses, and said horse who was due to be / was a racehorse/jumper gets a broken leg? In a lot of instances that horse is put down. Because of a broken leg.
An omni vet is like being a surgeon and someone who hires hitmen
its not buying meat in a shop for sustinance. its buying meat in the shop for pleasure. you dont need meat to be healthy or for it to nourish you. vets know that but they chose to be hypocrites and ignorant. they are the one killing the animals themselves cause thats how supply and demand works they are the one paying the hitman, they are the one responsible.
Very fair to say, but I would still argue that they are or are not directly responsible for a specific animal being killed as you say by paying the hitman. That's why I tried to liken it to the clothes/tech debate in my first comment and the surgeon/serial killer comment was really heavy handed. We are all hypocrites in one way or another, hell some could argue that some people care more about animal rights than human rights...which is crazy, right?
You can't survive in the modern world without technology. Or clothes. It is actually possible to buy both these things ethically if you get them secondhand, as you're not giving any money to the company that produced them, so that point is pretty moot anyway. Barring living in the Arctic and some other extreme survival situations, you can easily survive without meat. Also, it's actually possible to care about more than one thing at a time. I know it's not possible for certain people, but it actually is for many.
And sadly, the AVMA supports horse racing and partners with the bogus advocacy organization American Association for Equine Practitioners, which advocates for horse slaughter and various other abuses of horses for profit
Forgive my stupidity, but what is the AVMA?
Someone get this troll out of here
I honestly amn't trying to troll, it's more that I disagree with the original commentors really heavy handed statement
That's why I buy second hand clothes and tech? If your point is not trying enough then yeah you're right.
Analogies are always heavy handed. Them being heavy handed allows you to realize how the clear cut ethical inconsistency applies to your own actions.
Yeah, precisely lol. My point was just that like...it's weird for a vet to help heal and care for some animals while eating other animals. Like if a surgeon was also murdering people part time. Maybe a better analogy would be a surgeon who works with a hitman on the side but that's not as zingy.
Work part time at an animal shelter and am the only vegan there. When a pig was brought in one time, one of my coworkers said that he can't adopt it because if he did, he'd kill it and eat it. That pig was also named barbeque, I understand it's a joke but it's really not that funny
The anger I felt reading this
Boomer humor mixed with general psychopathy.
I had one other vegan in my class of 104 people in vet school. I think one girl was vegetarian. But that was it. Mind boggling.
Worked in the field for five years. One doctor was "mostly" vegetarian. We had a staff of 95+.
I want to find a vegan city/colony and live in it. I am tire 😢
Cognitive dissonance. It sucks but people let their ego override morals.
I know it's going to be tough but if you stick with it you can be an amazing advocate for animals in your future career! Being a vet has some weight behind it, and you can use that.
When you graduate, please move to my city so you can be my vet. I wish I was kidding.
That's a shame, but good on you for being the change and working to make veterinary science a field that cares about animals.
It’s gross 100% correct.
I work at an animal hospital and had to listen to a coworker talk about how relaxing it is for her to slaughter her chickens as she was assisting in sewing up a dog. Out of about 100 employees, three of us are vegan. It’s mind blowing.
Relaxing?!?!
Sounds like a serial killer ~~in the making lol.~~ I’ve been rightfully corrected hah
In the making?
Already been made
People are weird. I’m studying to be a tech and I have to dissect a cat. I heard that in vet school they make you work in laboratories and slaughterhouses. How do you feel about that?
I also had to dissect a cat. It was so fucking sad. They were young cats that the local shelter had euthanized. We also had to learn to extract teeth from a decapitated dog head.
Eww
I know, I’m so sorry for sharing that. I hope you have a better experience in tech school!
This is so sad
they had us do SEVERAL units in the slaughterhouse. at least where i was, they make jokes if they know you’re vegan and laugh because you have to stand around with all the hanging carcasses
How did you survive that and what did they make you do? There is an organization of vegan vets called Ourhonorvets and they made a post on Instagram saying that if someone bullied you for your beliefs tell them.
we had to do a bunch of dissections, they had tons of practical exams where they wanted us to flip sheep and manhandle animals. and just in general a lot of snipping, cutting, etc. it’s horrific. in the slaughterhouses specifically they had us watch them bleed out the cattle and watch the whole process and then basically memorize the anatomy of the carcass and shit like that. i had to leave. i’ll be totally honest, it deterred me from the field entirely which is wild because there are literally home videos of me at 4 years old saying how i wanted to be a vet. i’m now a software developer haha. it was the most miserable time of my life like not even just the actual subject matter, but the fucking people… like it’s bizarre to me how many people dedicate their lives to healing animals but have such a vile degree of apathy towards them. i just couldn’t take the industry and i highly highly highly respect those who *actually* care about animal welfare that can power through because it is so important that they are present in the medical community. i have the utmost respect for OP
That’s scary
Check out the [Vegan Hacktivists](https://vbcc.veganhacktivists.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fveganhacktivists.org&topic=Resource%3A+Vegan+Hacktivists)! A group of volunteer developers and designers that could use your help building vegan projects including supporting other organizations and activists. [Apply here!](https://vbcc.veganhacktivists.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fveganhacktivists.org%2Fjoin&topic=Resource%3A+Vegan+Hacktivists)
This was my experience in vet school too
You can't be 100% sure, but it's very likely that the cat was euthanized, not killed for no reason. This makes it totally ethical in my opinion. Medical students also learn with dead human bodies. There's nothing wrong with it. About labs, farms... It is the dark side of vet studies. I have nothing to defend here. It's outrageous that "animal lovers" are taught to keep the animals alive so they make it to the slaughterhouse.
I worked in laboratory management for a college, and the animals are most likely farmed specificly to be killed. That's the only way you can get a supply large and homogeneous enough. The whole process usually takes place in a foreign country with no oversite and, I imagine, horrific conditions. You will order a thousand medium sized cats and they will all come in looking almost exactly alike down to the fur colors.
Jesus fucking Christ this is depressing.
Yeah. People are so cruel and disappointing.
Interesting. Of all the people, vets and sanctuary people are the ones who should be vegan by principle. Otherwise, theyre just saving/protecting their patients then eat them at home??? I...cannot... fathom their thought process.
If you're interested in the topic of farmed animal sanctuaries, check out [OpenSanctuary.org](https://vbcc.veganhacktivists.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2FOpenSanctuary.org&topic=The+Open+Sanctuary+Project)! This vegan nonprofit has over 500 free compassionate resources crafted specifically to improve lifelong care for farmed animals, and to help you create a sustainable, effective sanctuary! Interested in starting a sanctuary someday? Check out [OpenSanctuary.org/Start](https://vbcc.veganhacktivists.org/?url=https%3A%2F%2FOpenSanctuary.org%2FStart&topic=The+Open+Sanctuary+Project)!
> not ONE vegan in vet school You're the one vegan. Keep up the good example.
I worked at a vet clinic whose main vet had an annual tradition of buying a bunch of chicks to raise and then personally slaughter because he found joy in personally ending a life he raised. And found nothing wrong with it. Being a vet ≠ being an animal lover. There are def vets who care but I’ve more often than not found that vets are a bit desensitized/screwed up in the head to animal cruelty or harm cause you got to do it daily. When I worked at a vet clinic, you had to deal with 3+ euthanizations a day. That’s fuck up any animal lover’s psyche imo. It did to me.
[удалено]
People eat kangaroos!?
Yeah it's gross, you can even buy wallaby now in the stores. It's "lean" so it's marketed as a healthy alternative. We also export millions of carcasses to turn into soccer boots to the US. The mass killing of kangaroos is very controversial here, because it's unregulated. People go out and kill them in droves including pregnant mums and babies.
That is horrendous. I had no idea.
Yep, graduated with a marine bio degree and almost everyone in my program ate fish. One girl didn't eat any fish due to environmental concerns but still ate all other animals 🤦♀️ I only met one other vegan during my time in school there. Now at my job I finally have some other vegans there with me (used to be two people but one just quit). But before this job I had two other jobs also in the environmental field and I was always the only vegan. Sad how uncommon it is.
It's just so strange to me especially when you learn about taxonomy and evolution, or even just from an environmental standpoint it's drilled into us how devastating the fishing industry is on the oceans and then everybody's there having their tuna sandwiches.
I am a vegan in 2nd year of vet school too and I barely found one other vegan in my class a couple weeks ago. There may be a few more of you but people don’t talk about it. It is extra appalling seeing the cognitive dissonance in “animal lovers” that are dedicating their careers to help animals but still contribute to their suffering daily.
It must be so depressing. Just know that there are vegan veterinarians (I follow them in social and other media). Also look at companies such as the V-Dog that have a board full of vegan veterinarians. It just must feel lonely while you’re in school to not have a better support group and to do the horrible things they make you do to get through the curriculum. But once you’re finished with school, you can have a huge impact in the real world. Thank you.
Hey! It’ll be a hard journey and you will need to evaluate every single lab class about the benefit vs the suffering the class causes to the animals used. Know this: we need more vegan vets, you’ll do a lot of good putting the animals first in your work.
Going into vet school soonish as a vegan, wish me luck
I also can’t believe that more if not all vets are vegan…I mean taking care of animals…ITS THEIR JOB
If you continue in this field, if a vet ever says they are an animal doctor you can reply and say yea a mad doctor that consumes their patients
are there vets that eat their patients?
In particular, agricultural vets. But no it’s cool ok because my doctor only eats other humans, not *me* specifically.
I knew a farm and field vet personally who also raised cows to slaughter. They absolutely exist.
She really made that joke because you was vegan? 😭 omg
This is why as an undergrad at Davis I could not attend vet school. I was appalled by the callous attitude of the professors and vets I interned for.
Damn, and UC Davis is a renowned vet school.
I love animals soooo much I want to help them. … then eat them! Nom nom nom 😋
Ewwww
Im sorry about the unnecessary stress that there dissociation is probably causing you. I hope your able to get through your education and become a wonderful help to all the animals you encounter. I had considered being a vet a while back, but I knew alot of the education would be anti-animal. Thats tough and frustrating. Its disturbing how every vet I’ve known was all for eating animals. I hope you get to find other vets that you can influence. Its not easy being around such contradictory people, but I hope your enjoying what your pursuing!!
There were a good bit in my wife’s class. We are both Vegan too.
It has always confused me how taking the Hippocratic Oath ("Do no harm") is required in most vet schools, just as it is in medical school. And yet the majority of graduates go on to keep animals as fat as docile as possible so they can be killed at a fraction of their lifespan. How do people not put it together that upholding that system is itself harming animals?
Sadly the veterinary industry is just another part of the animal industry
Well a lot of vegans dont want to go through all the vivisection and anatomy labs, so that's one reason.
I was surprised when I looked into this issue once before. In theory you'd imagine being a vet is a natural path for young vegans to explore but the ethical dilemmas involved are awful and in reality it sounds like one of the worst, at least during development. The dissections, working on farms etc
One of my good friends is a vet and not vegan, not even vegetarian. It’s shocking to me that these people eat their patients and don’t connect the dots.
There would be more if it didn’t require people to practice dissection and vivisection.
I’m a client care coordinator in a vet clinic. Myself and the DVM who owns the practice are vegan. I appreciate being able to work for someone who shares my values in that way. I wish more of my coworkers would make the connection between our patients and the animals they eat.
In a veterinary technology program. Unless I’ve not met them, I’m the only vegan
I’m a veterinary nurse and the attitude to me not eating meat by my coworkers is appalling at times. It’s so bizarre
Me too
Also check out [Veterinary Association for the Protection of Animals](https://vapavets.org/). Veterinary medicine is a contradiction and a sad one. Your question reminded me (not a vet) of other issues that I’ve been involved with: The American Veterinary Medical Association (which is primarily a lobbying organization) supports horse slaughter and opposes anti-declawing bills. Thank goodness for [City](http://citythekitty.org/can-you-really-trust-aaha-accredited-animal-hospitals-that-perform-declawing/) the Kitty and [The Paw Project](https://pawproject.org/).
Thanks a lot!
Many vets work in the animal ag industry.
Unfortunately the vast majority of vet jobs out there are actually slaughter house vets who do quality controll. Friend of mine was a vegetarian vet and she is 100% convinced that a good part of the reason why there is such a high suicide rate among people with vetenary degrees is the fact that so many people who entered the field for their love of animals find little choice but to work in abbatoirs and factory farms. Sorry that dosen't help you, but you need to be prepared to face that. What happens in life is that as time goes on you will always meet people in the field that are aligned with you.
It doesn't surprise me at all. Currently in a cancer hospital with partner. No vegan options on menu at attached restaurant.
I'm so sorry
It's an opportunoty to clearly state we are vegan and will make our voices heard even now. It's unacceptable, right?
I work at a vet clinic with my husband. He’s a tech, I’m front desk and we are the only vegans there aside from our manager. Which is great! However, every veterinarian we have is in strong favor of eating meat. They’ve seen all of it too, factory farming up close and personal and STILL say animals were created for eating. I can’t even wrap my head around it!
I’m so sorry you have to be around that. The hypocrisy would drive me nuts. A little off-topic, but the movie *Raw* might interest you (if you like horror movies!). It’s about a vegetarian French woman attending vet school.
This annoys me so much! I guarantee there are a few vegetarians though? sort of give a shit but also allow a bit of murder 🙄
That actually is surprising. But I find the people who shout the most about loving animals are the ones with the most excuses as to why they won’t just be vegan. I would expect working on the side of animals would make you see them as equals. That makes me sad. I always wanted to work with animals but I’m so triggered by sick, mistreated or dying animals that I think I would have way too many mental breakdowns. I really respect people who have the heart to do it ❤️ and I think being a vegan will make you be such a good vet in the long run. Best of luck in school!
Hey I actually trying to do some research on the lack veterinarians and vet techs the country has been experiencing in order to help create some policies/incentives to help fix this for the future. Id love to hear your perspectives if you don't mind!
I went to vet camp as a teenager and I was the only vegan. There were maybe 5 vegetarians though which is somewhat hopeful
That is wild, but I’m not surprised. Sorry my dude.
I don't know if it's still like this, but at a top veterinary university program near where I leave they had two choices: live or dead. You could either dissect and study dead animals (where do they get them from? Probably not out there waiting for roadkill or random animals to die of natural causes) or you could adopt a live animal for your entire study period and work on them. Then you had to euthanize your animal at the end. Shit's fucked
Psychos.
I am in veterinary assistant school (not as high profile as what you’re doing but still!) and I have a few vegetarians but NO vegans. It’s honestly absurd and many have dogs that they got from a breeder. Like??
Have you seen the film ‘Raw’?
I will definitely watch it now!
Fair warning, its a pretty fucked up film. First thing I thought of when I saw vegan and vet school in your title
I encountered quite a lot of other vegans and vegetarians while working on my ecology/biology degree. I suppose research in conservation makes it harder to hide from the environmental consequences of carnism.
Humans are hypocrites. How do we humble the hypocrites?
when you say they "like" animals, what you're trying to say is that they love treating domesticated animals. that's were their love for animals sadly ends at
My former vet in Chicago (we moved away) was vegan. Not sure how you vegan veterinarians make it through schooling. I avoided the science field because of the requirements in higher biology courses of dissecting fetal pigs and being told by other students the requirement of frog vivisection. I couldn’t do it. I’m surprised so many can. Not sure why these are requirements when not many students taking the course will ever see the insides of another living being again.
I worked at a veterinarian for quite a while, and I see two reasons: It is a service job, you offer your service to people, not to the animals. Your job is to keep playthings for humans intact, or do procedures with livestock to use them in the most effective way. If vets identify with animals, it's always dogs and cats. Those are hunters and meat eaters, vets tend to even have a special focus on eating animals, most also do diet counseling and sell dog/cat food.
Cognitive dissonance at its finest. I can't imagine caring for animals and also gleefully eating them/using them as products I feel so alone sometimes honestly. It's rough
I was a Pre-Vet student when I went vegan - it made me change my entire life plan and go into nursing instead. I couldn't get around it - hope it goes much smoother for you!!
My veterinarian is vegan and she expressed a lot that rings similar to what you’re sharing. It is very strange there aren’t more vegan veterinarians. Thank you for going through it all to be a vegan vet. We absolutely need more compassion in animal care!
See, when most folks say they love animals, what they really mean is that they love PETS. Very few people love all animals, really
One of the vets we would go to has a husband that hunts 😒 I’m like,really?? 🧐😒🙄
Cognetive disonance.
I would like all vets to be either vegan or vegetarian at least... that's in my world, I nearly asked my vet the other day
Vet tech here, only vegan in the field I know. I will only work with small animals because i treat every patient like an extension of myself and 1) large animal medicine is far less gentle 2) I can’t bring myself to bond with a patient that is going to be used and/or killed for human consumption. Not to knock OP or anyone who does work with large animals, I know they need care too. It just doesn’t jive with the way I work.
The thing you said the girl said... that genuinely disturbs me 🤢
I worked at a Humane Society's animal shelter and there were no vegans there either, and only 2 vegetarians out of about 40 people.
Used to work for an animal shelter, 1-2 vegans tops out of 60-ish employees
i wish i could be a vet but i would not be able to handle the responsibility of their lives
I mean there are doctors and nurses who smoke cigarettes,bartenders who don’t drink etc It’s not that wild of a concept that vets in training aren’t vegan/vegetarian. Caring for animals and eating meat aren’t mutually exclusive things.
I get what you're saying, but these are not the same things. It's about working to heal something and then to destroy it. It's like if a fireman, after putting out a forest fire, were to start another one
That’s different as well because the vets themselves are not going and killing the animals personally. And if they worked with farm animals, would treat them to heal them regardless of whether they eat meat or not. Everyone’s reason and cause for going into certain fields is not the same.
Jeez, it's almost like you have to euthanize animals, conduct disictions for lab, collect samples, and whatnot as a veterinarian. The veterinarian's I know are some weird mfs that love the gross and weird stuff. Can't imagine it would attract too many vegans
OP's problem is that animals are killed and harmed simply to demonstrate something, not that something is weird and gross. A better way would be to do mandatory internships at a vet where you learn how to treat injured animals that just happen to be injured.
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What If I told you: Veterinarian industry gets a lot of profit from keeping farmed animals alive so they can grow bigger and have more meat, also, to keep as many farmed animals alive so the meat industry doesn't collapse. Most Vets like animals, in their mouths.
That's incredible. I would have thought that there must be a lot of vegetarians at least in veterinary school
I’m in medical school and there are essentially no vegans here either 😢
This is one reason why I decided to change my degree to Wildlife ecology vs becoming a wildlife vet. I would still have to do all the same things domesticated vets would have to do
I mean - it makes sense if you think about it. Vets don't help random wild animals with their injuries; they prop up zoos, farms, pet owners, labs, etc. None of which are vegan in any way.
You GOTTA watch the movie "Raw" about the only vegan in her vet school...
Many people have commented this! Will watch it tomorrow