pet connection

The new VIN News Service run by the independent and well-respected Veterinary Information Network (VIN) is picking up speed now, with a staff of top reporters on board. (Note: I’m not able to help them much right now, so I’m still sort of affiliated, but a bit overwhelmed by dealings with my aging parents at the moment.)

My long-time friend and “Cats For Dummies” co-author Dr. Paul Pion, a world-renowned veterinary cardiologist and the top dog at VIN, wants the news service to speak for veterinarians. Too often, he argues, what passes for veterinary news is handed to the media by industry or government (sometimes so tightly linked as to be interchangeable, as we’ve seen so often).

As a result, veterinarians, their clients and the animals they both care for don’t get the information they need or have a voice in the discussions.

Dr. Pion can do more than assign good reporters to a story. Since a large percentage of veterinarians belong to VIN, he can use its membership to spot trends and develop stories others would miss. The numbers of deaths from tainted pet food might never have been known without VIN. The veterinarians there first put the pieces together (otherwise most of the deaths would have been seen as isolated, unconnected incidents). Dr.  Pion commissioned a statistical study that confirmed  our own anecdotal reports to our database of thousands of dead pets.  In the months since, those numbers — not the FDA’s “do ya think we’re that stoopid?” numbers — have become the accepted history of the event.

All the dangers of tainted imported Chinese products since — from food to toys — may never have been understood as connected were it not for VIN.

As befits someone with multiple interests and the energy of three people — I’ve known Paul for 20 years, and I think he hasn’t slept more than an average of three hours a night in all that time — VIN News Service stories range widely, from so-called affiliate credit cards jumping interest rates to how bleach works to the affect of the sour economy on veterinary practices. Oh yeah, and that service tax on veterinary medicine California wants to add? Wisconsin now thinks it’s a good idea, too.

VIN News Service is, of course, the latest  salvo in the war to get the news out beyond the ever-shrinking, corporate-owned mainstream news media that generally insists the only pet-related story worth covering involves Paris Hilton’s Chihuahua.  We’re part of that effort to get real news out, too, as are other bloggers, most notably Dr. Patty Khuly at Dolittler.

I remember during the pet-food recalls listening to a corporate mouthpiece explain that the problem wasn’t that thousands of pet were dead (and what that said about food safety for us all) but rather that “unauthorized information” was getting out.

Yeah, that truth thing can be soooo pesky.

It’s a whole new world, and I  couldn’t be happier than to have VIN News Service as part of it.