Petco has announced it will not sell pet food or treats containing artificial ingredients, according to Dr. Whitney Miller, DVM, MBA, Diplomate ACVPM, and Director of Veterinary Medicine at Petco.  This change will be implemented by May 2019.  The Petco media release from November 13 is provided below, along with some of the media coverage to date.  This information is provided to VMAE members as part of Petco’s Gold-level Strategic Initiative Partnership with VMAE. SAN DIEGO, Nov. 13, 2018  -- Today, Petco announced it will not sell food and treats containing artificial colors, flavors...

Public funding for higher education has not bounced back a decade after the Great Recession, according to a recently released report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). After the financial crisis, colleges responded to significant state funding cuts by increasing tuition, reducing faculty, limiting course offerings, and in some cases closing campuses. Funding has rebounded slightly since then, but costs remain high and services in some places have not returned, the report says. Nearly every state has shifted more of the education costs to students. The decline in state...

American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) President Dr. John H. de Jong made student debt the primary focus of his column in the Oct. 1 issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.  Dr. de Jong stressed how important it is for the profession to be financially rewarding. The AVMA, along with the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges and the Veterinary Medical Association Executives, co-lead the Veterinary Debt Initiative, with a goal to help veterinarians thrive in financially sustainable and profitable careers. Dr. de Jong explained AVMA’s role...

“Student debt is a higher education issue. It’s a problem affecting not only the veterinary profession, but also many other professions,” says Dr. Andrew Maccabe, Chief Executive Officer of the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC). The Association of American Medical Colleges recently published seven helpful tips that medical students can use to cut costs, manage expenses and repay loans. The information can be applicable to any profession, including veterinary medicine. AAVMC is one of the three organizations, along with the American Veterinary Medical Association and the Veterinary Medical Association Executives,...

The House of Representatives recently passed three new tax-related bills that may affect veterinarians. It’s uncertain if the Senate will vote on the bills before the current Congressional session ends but the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) is reviewing them closely. The House-passed package includes: a permanent extension of the tax reform policies passed in December, enhanced educational and retirement vehicles, and a more generous deduction for start-up businesses. Read more in the AVMA@work blog....

Veterinary student debt is part of a larger debt trend in the United States. In fact, 44.2 million Americans owe $1.5 trillion in student loans. Dr. Bridgette Bain, Associate Director of Analytics with the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Veterinary Economics Division, says there are factors specific to veterinary medicine that need to be considered. Dr. Bain explains why the foundational issue is not just debt (hint: it has to do with income) and provides in-depth analysis of student debt data. She also maps out what the AVMA is doing...

Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine’s delegates attended Michigan State University’s Fix the Debt Summit in 2016. They returned to the East Coast, acknowledging that significant thought and effort was being focused on the student debt problem at a national level. However, the College wanted to harness the profession’s initial findings and do more. They wished to broaden the search for additional solutions that would directly impact their students. They decided to form a DVM Educational Debt Task Force, co-chaired by Drs. Greg Daniel, Interim Dean, and Jennifer Hodgson, Associate Dean...

The VMAE Board of Directors met recently with Dr. Link Welborn, President of Veterinary Study Groups (VSG), and agreed that VMAE members should be apprised that Veterinary Management Groups and Zoetis are inviting veterinary medical associations to schedule a sponsored educational session on exit strategies. The presentation, which can range from 50-120 minutes depending on the preference of the conference, is focused on (1) reviewing strategies, including pros and cons, that can be utilized in selling a practice and (2) key factors involved in maximizing the value of the practice....

To facilitate peer learning, VMAE created the Momentum Book Club where participants can discuss key learnings and share “aha!” moments at the end of each module comprising the Momentum online course. At noon Mountain time on Thursday, September 27, you can join the Momentum Book Club for a video-based, one-hour chat on the second module of Momentum. The first book club session was engaging and lively – and the second (of three) installments is around the corner. Catherine Haskins, co-founder of The Bridge Club (which hosts the discussions on their Zoom-based platform),...