Science Diet in Vet Offices?

[MaryP]

We all know that many [most] vet offices carry Science Diet. I have my opinions on this brand of food, but they're not really relevant to my question. What I am curious about is what is the incentive for vets to carry this line - and only this line- of food? I assume there is some sort of kick-back, but what, exactly, is it? I've wondered this for a long time. Does anyone have any first-hand knowledge?

[MrSnappy]

I don't think it's a kickback. Science Diet, in addition to making ... garbage food, also makes some of the most widely prescribed prescriptive food (Purina has some "medi-type" foods as well) and the veterinary market is their key market. I would imagine that there is some kind of "if you want to carry X prescriptive food, you must also carry and display our consumer brand foods as well" sort of deal. However, neither vets nor pet supply stores make any significant markup on food. In another lifetime, I was an Iams rep (before they sold the brand, and before there were really any other kinds of high end dog foods on the market) and all the profit goes to the dog food company. Pet supply stores make their money on other kinds of accessories with larger markups. Anyway, the vets are not making any real money off carrying food brands like SD, but the prescriptive formulas lead consumers to believe that everything the company makes is probably equally as good, so it's a good place for companies like SD to push their wares.

 

I have to say that most of the vet clinics in my area, and I've frequented a lot of them, have phased out brands like SD and either carry only prescriptive foods, or in some select cases, high end foods. And some in rare cases, raw foods

 

RDM

[Smokjbc]

We all know that many [most] vet offices carry Science Diet. I have my opinions on this brand of food, but they're not really relevant to my question. What I am curious about is what is the incentive for vets to carry this line - and only this line- of food? I assume there is some sort of kick-back, but what, exactly, is it? I've wondered this for a long time. Does anyone have any first-hand knowledge?

 

I've managed vet clinics for over 10 years now. There are no kickbacks for vets to carry Science Diet- it is just as expensive as other comparable brands of food. The reason most vets carry it, and IANAV so there may be more than my assumptions to it- is twofold. First of all, Science Diet is very aggressive in promoting it's food with vet students- both of my bosses tell of feeding their own pets Science Diet for free their entire vet school time. Secondly, Science Diet was also the most aggressive diet as far as getting the studies out there when it comes to treating illnesses with diet. Other foods have followed, but Science Diet Prescription diets have very well-documented studies that enable vets to recommend them and be well within their standard of care. Our office has distanced itself a bit from it- we don't promote it as a maintainance diet anymore and we found that palatability was a major issue once we had a choice between other prescription diets. Still, many of our associates still feel most comfortable with it as a prescription diet and we still carry it along with RC, IVD and Purina Vet Diets.

[Tassie]

Interesting. FWIW, the SD in vet offices thing is common here in Oz as well - though most seem to carry mostly just the prescription range (though in my vet's case, that might be as much as anything due to space restrictions. ) The larger animal feed stores in my town don't carry it, but the pet shops do seem to.

[LyndaB]

I was very sad to find out about this. We fed our two collies SD from pups because we were led to believe it was the best food on the market.

 

Ignorant to dog nutrition in those earlier days, we thought we were doing the very best for our dogs. I am gutted to find out we could have given them something so much better (and probably cheaper) - we blindly trusted the vet's recommendation.

 

We have since learned to read contents......

[Dal & Mad's Mom]

We feed the lamb and rice puppy SD if we have a senstive litter (loose poops from richer food). It works well that way.

 

We also get the purina and royal canin vet diets at our food bank. They do work well on dogs that were previously fed old roy types but, alot contain corn. I end up supplementing with a better food (purchased) to keep them from getting diarrhea.

 

I agree it must be with marketing if they have so much that they can donate to rescues. From that perspective they do a good thing.

[MaryP]

I have to say that most of the vet clinics in my area, and I've frequented a lot of them, have phased out brands like SD and either carry only prescriptive foods, or in some select cases, high end foods. And some in rare cases, raw foods

 

Wow, the vets up there are much more progressive than the ones down here, then. You can't walk into a vet clinic anywhere, IME, and not see SD, and usually only SD.

 

It's a bit troubling to me that its just their successful marketing that has allowed them to worm their way into nearly every vet clinic around. I'd almost be more understanding (though not condoning it for many reasons) if I knew that the vets were getting something from the company in return other than simply having the "pleasure" of being suppliers of their food.

[angel09]

I have worked as a vet tech for the 6 years. At many of the hospitals I have worked at we carried Science Diet, Eukanuba, Purina. These were all prescription diets of course. The vets don't get any incentives for it, neither does the staff. We still have to pay for the food when we need it. When the pets don't need to be on a prescription diet we recommend other brands of food. I feel that these diets are not that bad at all. I have been through many nutrtion courses.

[LyndaB]

I have worked as a vet tech for the 6 years. At many of the hospitals I have worked at we carried Science Diet, Eukanuba, Purina. These were all prescription diets of course. The vets don't get any incentives for it, neither does the staff. We still have to pay for the food when we need it. When the pets don't need to be on a prescription diet we recommend other brands of food. I feel that these diets are not that bad at all. I have been through many nutrtion courses.

 

That's nice to know. I always thought (and was told!) how wonderful and healthy our dogs looked - Tan was 13 and looked wonderful.

 

Does anybody know how good the 'Go! natural' feed is?

[Rave]

Interesting. When I worked at the Va. Tech vet school, there was always tons of free stuff and perks around from the dog food reps. While not kickbacks, there were these incentives. Granted this was ten years ago.

[capnree]

Where I work is associated with a veterinary college, and every two weeks we can buy SD at a discount price --$10 per -large- bag of SD. Seriously painful to think about, but I still end up spending $30+ more dollars to buy a different food.

 

($10!!!! Can you imagine? Oh I wish...)

[Flamincomet]

EVERY vet in my town sells SD, they basically shove it down your throat as you walk out the door. In fact, when I took Ghost in for a check-up not long ago, after mentioning to the vet that Ghost was fed raw, he sarcastically said, "What, you don't like our food?" To which my reply was, "Dogs are carnivores and I don't believe that they can even digest corn, so no, I don't like SD... Not to mention that, even if you DO (And he did) dispute the fact that dogs are carnivores, it's a well known FACT that cats are obligate carnivores, yet SD still has corn as a very large portion in ALL of their recipes for cats."

That shut him up pretty quick

 

All the info I've seen is that vets DO receive an in-pocket profit from selling SD.

 

"hundreds of thousands of dollars a year funding university research and nutrition courses at every one of the 27 US veterinary colleges. Once in practice, vets who sell Science Diet and other premium foods directly pocket profits of as much as 40%" (Parker-Pope, T. 1997. For You, My Pet. The Wall Street Journal. 3 November 1997. In Lonsdale, T. 2001. Raw Meaty Bones. p266).

 

http://rawfed.com/myths/vets.html

 

 

Autumn

[Shetlander]

EVERY vet in my town sells SD, they basically shove it down your throat as you walk out the door.

 

All the vets I've known only have the prescription diets. And most do not even keep those out in the waiting area. In a few instances, you wouldn't even know they carry the stuff. Now what they recommend you feed your dog, I can't say because that's not a question I ask them.

 

All the info I've seen is that vets DO receive an in-pocket profit from selling SD.

 

I don't know whether vets do or don't receive any profit from selling SD, but I would say that your sources may well have their own bias.

 

Personally, I don't see Prescription Diets as the Devil. I've had a couple dogs in the past who had health issues that did very well on their kibbles. I remember a raw feeder talking about her dog needing to go on a Prescription Diet for a urinary tract issue, but she got him off the terrible stuff as soon as he was well. She never seemed to consider that her raw diet may have had anything to do with the crystals in her dog's urine. All she could focus on was Prescription Diet BAD even though her dog got better on it than what she had been feeding him.

[Rave]

Where I work is associated with a veterinary college, and every two weeks we can buy SD at a discount price --$10 per -large- bag of SD. Seriously painful to think about, but I still end up spending $30+ more dollars to buy a different food.

 

($10!!!! Can you imagine? Oh I wish...)

 

yep VT had that too, but for a couple different brands IIRC.

[Smokjbc]

Personally, I don't see Prescription Diets as the Devil. I've had a couple dogs in the past who had health issues that did very well on their kibbles. I remember a raw feeder talking about her dog needing to go on a Prescription Diet for a urinary tract issue, but she got him off the terrible stuff as soon as he was well. She never seemed to consider that her raw diet may have had anything to do with the crystals in her dog's urine. All she could focus on was Prescription Diet BAD even though her dog got better on it than what she had been feeding him.

>>

 

I agree with this as well. I've fed my dogs Science Diet for several years, I did change to Purina and now to Before Grain in the last two years or so but not because I thought Science Diet was "bad". I have two 14 year old dogs that are cancer and disease free,so far, despite having Science Diet for their sole diet for at least a decade. As far as vets making a profit on Science Diet- they do on any brand of food or medication- and 40% is below normal inventory markup for most vets. Food in general is at far less of a markup than our meds are, and that has been true of any vet I have worked for. Like I said previously, when it comes to treating certain conditions- Science Diet has few equals in proven studies and were the first in the industry to address food treatments for certain conditions. I know my old cat would have died at a very early age due to FUS if it was not for Science Diet Prescription food as the alternative would have been surgery I could not afford and likely re-occurance. He stayed crystal free from the time he was 4 years old until he died at 15 (unrelated to the FUS) because of Science Diet and Purina prescription diets.

 

We had a client lose her dog to cancer and bemoan the fact she had fed the dog Science Diet and "didn't know" how evil it was. When her dog passed away, it was a 14 year Labrador Retriever- well beyond what most Labs survive and probably double of what a Lab would have survived 30 years ago.

[AK dog doc]

1) There's no kickback. In addition, I personally do not receive income from prescribing any Hill's Rx diet. I cannot speak for other vets.

 

2) We (our clinic, I mean, not vets everwhere) have a limited amount of space to stock and carry diets, so we ONLY sell Rx diets; no maintainance, light-maintainance, hairball control, senior or puppy.

 

3) Hill's DOES have a lot of good science for the Rx diets, and they're always doing further study. Not every Rx diet has the same amount of quality study backing it, but I'm always comparing them.

 

4) Depending on the Rx diet we're talking about, there are often OTHER Rx brands available, so there is a choice if you (or your pet) don't like Hill's/SD. HOWEVER: in AK, it is literally impossible to get some of those diets unless you special-order them directly from the company, as there is no distributor in AK. Sometimes you can't even special-order them. Even if you can, they cost about 2x as much because of the special order and the shipping.

 

5) There have been several times I've had another brand's Rx diet fail to accomplish the desired results in a given patient; more rarely, I've also had Hill's diets fail in an individual patient. This is somewhat dependant on which Rx diet you're talking about (as in, what disease or condition the Rx diet is intended to treat).

 

6) Every dog/cat/hamster/cow etc is different, and the best diet for that animal is the diet that that animal does best ON, regardless of the brand or lack thereof. There is NO diet - not one - that is perfect for every animal. This includes home-cooked and raw.

 

7) The proof is in the pudding. An example: when I was in vet school (where we did NOT get food for free, but we did get it at a student discount, like everything else in the hospital) I had a 10-year-old dog that was 10% overweight. My roomate had a 10 year old dog that was 10% UNDERweight. Both dogs were put on SD Senior, free-choice. My dog lost 2# (which was 10% of her body weight) and the other dog GAINED 6# (which was 9.1% of her body weight.) Same diet, free-choice intake, OPPOSITE (but appropriate) changes in body weight and condition. That means that BOTH dogs did better, in exactly opposing ways, on that diet. However, YMMV.

 

JME, of course.

[juliepoudrier]

I've only ever required prescription diets for cats, who are notoriously more picky than dogs. When my first elderly cat had CRF, he wouldn't eat SD, but he would eat Purina, so we went with that prescription diet for him. Later, when I had a cat with crystals in the urine, I asked for the Purina Rx diet for that condition because I remember how well my old Mocha ate their renal diet. The cats with crystals lived on the Purina UR for some time, until I moved to a location with less mineralized water and premium foods became more the norm for feeding. I now have two geriatric cats in early stages of CRF and once again I looked at what was available via prescription. My vet carries both SD and Royal Canin, but when I asked about Wysong (which makes a animal-based protein-vs. the plant-based proteins of the other Rx diets), my vet was quite willing to write me a prescription if I wanted to order the Wysong. This same vet also carries food like Nature's Variety pre-made raw.... So although I don't particularly like the ingredients in most of the available prescription diets, the fact is that they do work, at least in my experience. When I was considering the Wysong (and I haven't ruled it out, except for the fact that the cats didn't actually like the regular canned Wysong I bought them to try before ordering the renal diet), I actually spoke to a technician at the company, who explained the philosophy behind their diet (which is higher in protein than most Rx kidney diets), and when I passed his explanation on to my holistic vet, he said the explanation made sense to him, FWIW. I think when you're dealing with health problems, especially those that are life-threatening, you need to consider not only what logically would seem to be the best but also what actually has been proven to work.

 

Back in the dark ages when I worked for a vet, the only Rx diet out there was SD, and that's probably one reason so many vets (still) use it (i.e., the old "tried and true").

 

J.

[AliciaB]

I don't trust commerical dog food brands. I've heard too many bad things. I give my pup Innova, but it's pretty expensive..