Just saying hi because vegan vet students are so rare and I feel alone in my vet school all the time! I have been vegan since 2006 and I'm a 2nd year veterinary student at University of Illinois - I see you're in Spain for school! That's very cool! No matter where we work, vegan vets are desperately needed to speak up for our patients, when others aren't willing to!
Aw thank you so much thats so sweet❤ and yes, we vegan vets need to stick together to make the industry a better place for our patients and other animals ☺
I'm 14, vegan, and a prospective vet student. Recently I was put off by euthanasia but I am feeling more comfortable about it now. What morally conflicting situations are included in the course and are any of these optional? Thank you :)
Many. I face moral dilemmas on a weekly basis. You can name any subject I've ever taken in vet school and I can give you a list of moral dilemmas I've had in that class. Pharmacology: we only give the most effective treatment to small animals because it's too expensive to pay for the best treatment for a cow, so it's "better" to give an older medicine because it's cheaper, even if it has more side effects. Anatomy: animals were euthanized specifically for me to learn and practice on. Nutrition: calculate the least amount of feed necessary to make an animal grow the biggest as fast as possible. The list is endless. You just have to accept it as societal propaganda and try to pull useful information from what you're taught. I remind myself why I'm doing this and I tell myself it's okay to feel upset, but to just keep working at it because vets like us are who will change the world for animals for the better. If people as passionate about animals as us give up, who will be working for the animals?
Various Varieties of Vegans
Gooey homemade vegan brownies with oreo crumbs on top ☺️☺️ easy and delicious!
Do you ever just stop and really think about how absurd it is that we’re still eating animal products??
Like you could grow some almonds, blend them up, put them through a seive and use that in your cereal
or you could raise a cow for years, waste thousands of gallons of food and water, impregnate her, remove and possibly kill her calf, drain the milk from her body with a machine for hours every day, and drink that.
Like we keep millions of chickens in cages, deny them light and movement, just so we can eat eggs?? We don’t need to eat eggs what the fuck?
You could eat mock meat made of grains, or you could raise millions of cows for years, feed them half of the world’s crops, and slaughter them horrifically for.. a steak? A burger? We don’t need to eat either? What the honest fuck?
How does this make sense to anybody? This system is beyond obsolete and should’ve died out a hundred fucking years ago. Why are we still okay with this?
I approve.
“George is my pet goldfish. He was a birthday present, and over the past 10 years he’s lived a very privileged life, swimming in my backyard pond. One day I noticed a bump, and over the next few weeks the strange growth expanded to the size of an olive. Panicking, I told Tristan, the vet at my work, and he confirmed it was a tumour. ‘What can we do?’ I asked. ‘I can operate,’ Tristan said. Over 45 minutes, he cut away the tumour, using tiny stitches and glue to put the wound back together. Then, with bated breath, I waited while Tristan placed my little mate into the resuscitation bucket. Minutes later, his tail started swishing and, before I knew it, he was swimming around, alive and well! Some people wouldn’t consider going to such lengths for a goldfish, but George is family - and for family, we would do anything.”
- Lyn Orton, 50, Hoppers Crossing, Victoria, Australia
Hi, I'm a pre-vet vegan, and I just saw the last ask about artificial insemination, and I was wondering what you thought about people calling it 'rape.' I don't know much about the whole process, but it seems like a bit of an exaggeration to me.
Good question! I've thought about this myself a bit but this is what I concluded:Let me just start by saying I under no circumstance think it's okay to artificially force a pregnancy upon another being - human or not. However, the definition of rape by the Oxford Dictionary states that rape is "the crime, typically committed by a man, of forcing another person to have sexual intercourse with the offender against their will" and artificial insemination just doesn't fit that definition. So while I disagree with artificial insemination for animal production purposes, it is not, by definition, rape. I hope this helped :)
This is what I daydream about doing while stuck in the library studying...
NEW GRADUATE PROBLEMS
What good is misery if you can’t milk a little humour out of it, right. Will probably make more of these, because if I’m not laughing I’d be sobbing instead!
I relate to these haha this is me every time I have a practical class at our hospital and an instructor / vet asks me a question... :p
Hey! I just read that you are studying vet in Spain -- can you do a DVM there?
Yes you can! However, it wont be recognized by the AVMA. I have family in both Europe and America so I had to do extra accreditation either way and just decided to go to a European school instead of an American one; however, what I didn't realize when I applied to vet school is that there *are* AVMA-accredited schools in Europe:VetArgo Sup in FranceU of London in EnglandU of Dublin in IrelandU of Utrecht in the NetherlandsU of Glasgow and Edinburgh, both in ScotlandIf you want an entire list of all schools accredited by the AVMA, go to avma.org :) I hope this helped and feel free to ask if you have any more questions or want more information, I'm always here to help the best I can :)
Do you have to perform cow artificial insemination in vet school? I'm going to study veterinary and I'm currently going vegan, so all this rape thing is kinda scary. I do not want to perform that, but I don't want to fail my class either. Maybe you can tell about your experience? Thank you
Hey! Thank you so much for your question. I can't speak for all vet schools, but at my university, we are required to take animal production and production management courses. This will include rectal exams of cows, artificial insemination of cows, mares and sows, as well as learning how to calculate the proper time for slaughter to maximize profits. It's absolute hell, a living nightmare. But I wanted to go to school where I would be qualified to work with all domestic animals, and unfortunately the only way for me to learn about pigs (my fav animal) is to learn how to mass produce and kill them as well. I'd recommend contacting the school and then professors. My professors all know I'm sensitive to that kind of stuff and take it into consideration when giving me tasks at our farm. Sorry this was so long-winded... I have a lot to say about this. Hope this helped and feel free to ask me something else if you have more questions about it :)
Why I Almost Quit Vet School
For those of you who don’t know, I attend a university in Spain. Spain has a culture of bullfighting, which I obviously do not agree with. At a school organized event, veterinary students and apparently some professors were seen teasing, hitting and riling up young bulls in an arena by poking them with sticks, kicking them, throwing sand in their eyes, yelling at them, and playing ridiculously loud music to scare the young bulls. Many people have been upset with the school over this, which is why I didn’t leave. But for a brief few days, I was looking into taking a gap year and applying elsewhere for next year because this is absurd, outrageous and unacceptable from a veterinary school. The school has since apologized and the bull event is not supposed to happen next year. But it just goes to show that not even veterinarians all have the animals best interest at heart.
Why do so many of us veterinarians actually commit suicide?
Every few months another layperson, completely surprised about the high risk of mental illness and suicide in the veterinary profession, writes some opinion piece about how terrible it is, and about why they think we suffer the problem.
Well, that’s about as useful as telling someone having an anxiety attack to ‘calm down’. (Not Very.)
To all the vegans who take the time to do their research and make long and informative posts, whether to educate or inspire vegans and people deciding to make the change, or to shut carnists up, thank you.
To the vegans who create and provide delicious recipes, you’re all wonderful. Carnism ruined my imagination and inspiration for food, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. You are so appreciated.
To all vegans: you are important. You are making a difference. You are making the world a better place.