So far, I haven’t met a vegetarian veterinarian.
Hey, I knew an MD that did the same thing!
He’s out of prison now, 10 years later.
How is Dr. Lector?
'Far as I know, vets don’t usually eat dogs and cats and parakeets. They might eat cows and fish, but I think you’d do as well to argue that ALL doctors eat their patients, since humans are animals too.
Well, he was more of a self-acclaimed Dr. Love Machine rather than a Dr. Lector. Which is why they let him out, I suppose.
The nurses (medical assistants?) at my vet’s office are all vegetarians. One explained it to me like this: “My family and I went to a really high end steak house- the kind where they have the HUGE pieces of cow sitting out, so you can seet he meat you’re getting. I looked at that hind end of a cow and all I could think about was fixing it. Ever since then, I haven’t eaten meat.”
So there ya go.
As with most professions, it’s important to know how to separate your personal life from your work.
As long as the vet doesn’t keep a BBQ gently warming in the back yard of the office and marinade in the medical supply cupboards, I see no conflict of interest.
Ew. I hope they don’t eat the sick ones.
Most of the vets I know grew up in cattle country and a number of them were raised on ranches. Being a vet is just a different section in the cattle industry that they grew up in. Really in a twisted way by them eating beef, they are keeping the ranchers in buisness, who in turn come to them with buisness, see it all works out.
I used to work on a kibbutz dairy farm, and I got to know some of the vets. Asking them not to eat meat would be like asking a mechanic not to drive a car.
As long as they are livestock patients, no. If he’s doing the county’s euthanasia business on strays and then barbecuing them, that would be weird.
But surely someone who was a vegetarian on ethical rather than nutritional grounds wouldn’t have an objection to eating an animal that died of natural causes.
I seem to recall a Saturday Night Live skit about a vegetarian restaurant based on just this premise. When one of the customers orders lamb, the waiter has to rush out back to see whether their very sick sheep has expired yet.
Hey, wow, that’s almost a GD. In MPSIMS.
Stop that. 
I know quite a few vegetarian veterinarians - even one Unitarian vegetarian veterinarian. Most are small animal practitioners, although I know of one swine specialist who is.
Nobody eats meat because they hate animals - liking, even loving animals doesn’t preclude eating them. And I’d venture to say that most veterinarians know a bit more than your average Joe about the purity of the food supply. They know all the “all the meat in the grocery store is full of hormones and antibiotics” scare stuff is hokem.
At least 2 of my professors are vegetarians. One is a vet pathologist, the other an epidemiologist/exotics veterinarian… well, the second one is not exactly a vegetarian… he’ll eat fish, but not cows or chickens.
The other profs I think eat what they want.
Seriously, you want veterinarians to eat meat and be concerned about the quality of the meat you eat.
I know there are veterinarians who are hired to inspect animals as they come into butchering facilities, as well as the carcasses.
If true, what of the OB-GYN?
Intriguing. But as a public health menace, I’m more worried about the pediatricians.
I think there’s a distinction between companion animals and the kind of animals you eat. Dogs and cats, and some kinds of birds, have always been of the former kind in this country. Nobody would think there’s anything weird about treating the kind of animals that are meant to be your friends, and eating the kind that aren’t.
It’s not like that everywhere though - in India they don’t eat cows (I think) because they’re considered sacred. In most Indian restaurants I’ve been to, they do not have beef on the menu, but they have lamb, chicken and fish - so clearly what we have here is the idea that some animals are ok to eat and others just aren’t.
I mean, look at how we are in America about horse meat. They eat it all the time in other countries, but you can’t get it anywhere here. Just because you’re “not supposed to eat it,” and for no other reason.
So Marley2 just how much are the membership fees to join PETA?
Call me a PETA member at your own peril…
