DILEMMA: ETHICAL

Chicory

4 comments

Yay! My new watch arrived! But should I wear it? Yes, I'm stuck in an ethical dilemma.

As a certified veterinary nurse, I am required to fulfill 12 continuing education credits a year. Usually that means attending expensive workshops or lectures. But luckily for me, Purina Pet Food and Merial (they make vaccines) offer a few online modules. I was able to fufill my credits by taking four nutrition courses offered by Purina.

Now, we did not have nutrition courses in vet tech school, which made me livid. So I studied veterinary nutrition on my own. Extensively. 

Purina did send a rep to our school to do a little workshop for us. I spent the question period drilling the poor rep about sleezy nutrition tricks in the pet food industry. He ducked the questions well.

Which is why I was not surprised when the four online Purina nutrition "classes" vehemently defended by-products, wheat, other unnecessary grains and shoddy labeling practices. Don't get me wrong, folks. Both the workshop and the modules were, in addition to being free, friendly, thorough and scientifically sound for the most part. But the blatant self-promotion was nauseating. Like I said, none of that surprised me.

PURINA MUG

What did surprise me, though, were the bennies. Yes, Purina actually gave away gifts to technicians who took these modules. Very generous gifts. For completing the four free modules, I received a watch, a travel mug, travel lunchbox and a backpack. All very nice. This is most certainly not the first time I have gotten such bennies as a tech. In the vet clinics whenever a rep from a vaccine or vet equipment company came, we would get things like scrubs that said "Advantage" on them.

Now, it's nice, but WTF? Am I really supposed to be in the room with a client, saying, "Okay, Ms. Smith. Here's how you use this product. This will get rid of Fluffy's fleas. It's a good product" while leaning over her with my scrub top that screams, "ADVANTAGE!" Yes, Advantage is good for fleas. Since it is a pesticide I encourage people (at least with cats) to use it once, then keep them indoors. But how is Ms. Smith supposed to react when we charge her an arm and a leg for this product, while the techs look like walking billboards for their product? Disgusting.

And I don't mind telling you, I have a sleeping disorder. Four years ago I saw a specialist, hoping he could prescribe some medicine for me. I got a really odd vibe from this guy. And he sat there with his Seroquel tote bag, sipping out of a Seroquel mug, and yes, suggesting that I should try Seroquel. For those who don't know, they prescribe this stuff to schizophrenics too. I told him that I preferred Restoril, or would even try non-drug methods. But he kept shoving the Seroquel at me. So shameless.

To top it all off, Purina made their product part of the module exams. Each module has a test at the end. In order to pass the "class" I had to answer hundreds of questions having to do with each lesson. Most of them were legit; but there were at least 30 questions where three of the multiple-choices were generic food choices, and one was a Purina product. Well that was easy, the correct answer was ALWAYS a Purina product. When they asked for feedback at the end, they would ask "what could we have done better"? I answered them with something like, "Maybe you could tell the truth about how corn can cause diabetes in cats".

So there you have it, I'm "stuck" with a gorgeous watch, mug, backpack and lunch bag. I would love nothing more than to bring them to grad school with me and make use of them; otherwise I will at least have to indeed buy a lunch bag and new backpack. But I strongly disagree with Purina's use of wheat gluten, corn and by-products, among other things, in their pet food. And to top it all off, I would NEVER feed it to my pets, not even my strays. So what do I do? Maybe I should donate them.