An Open Letter to My Alma Mater

Dear Iowa State College of Veterinary Medicine,

 Thank you for the sound education you gave me regarding anatomy, physiology, bacteriology, dermatology, pharmacology, internal medicine, surgery, histopathology and any number of other 'ologies' that I am sure I have forgotten more of than I ever imagined I would learn.  I am, however, most unhappy with the status of education of production animal medicine. The thing that always sparks me off in this regard is typically a comment or article in the quarterly published Gentle Doctor magazine that I receive since I am supposed to be a happy alumna of the college. This month, it was one of the bullet points in the Dean's Letter p.3 (#4 to be exact)
     

 "Establishment of the Swine Medicine Education Center, a collaborative effort that provides unmatched access to a modern production system that includes 90,000 sows and nearly two million pigs and complements our swine, beef and dairy summer programs, and our rejuvenated food animal field services unit." [emphasis is my own] 

You are supposed to be perceived as the "leader in production medicine" also known as "food animal medicine" or to those lay people that may be reading this, "meat".  You are a land grant college in the very middle of the American Heartland, dedicated to the science an innovation involved in feeding the masses, and yet the system is terribly broken and you are all busy trying to fix the system using more of the same technology that broke it in the first place.  

 Stop.  Look around you. 

The world is slowly waking up to the food that they eat and what it is doing to us.  This is clearly evidenced by books like The Omnivore's Dilemma by Pollan and movies such as Food Inc.  You may have not read or watched them yourselves, but you should.  The research being expressed by these people is sound and, what's more important, makes good sense.  You taught me to look at research objectively and I have....theirs is better than yours.  It shouldn't take more antibiotics to grow our meat, it shouldn't take chemicals to sterilize our food, it shouldn't take people dying from food borne illnesses for you to wake up and realize that maybe nature might have a better way. 

Is it because the large pharmaceutical companies won't pump millions into the coffers that you so desperately need to keep going?  Is it because big businesses like Monsanto, Cargill and Pfizer will leave you high and dry if you actually do what is right and study the differences between organically grown, sustainably managed, pasture fed animals and the high stress, GMO corn-eating, pseudo-food animals that are currently being produced by IBP and Tyson?   For shame.

Well, just so we are clear, this is one veterinarian that you trained that will not be contributing to your college unless it is to train the next generation of veterinarians to think for themselves and wake up to what is happening to our animals.  We take an oath at the completion of our vet school education, an oath to protect the welfare of the animals we treat, to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves and yet here we are locking them up in confinement operations that are clearly NOT in their best interest.  I would like to see any one of you live one day in a space confined such that you couldn't all lay down at the same time and there was so much fecal material in the air around you that it was difficult to breathe.  Or maybe you should all be housed over your own excrement for a while and in such a noisy environment that you can't sleep unless you are completely exhausted.  We have all heard what stress does to our own systems and yet we expect our animals - those that will give their lives so that we may eat - to endure such conditions so that our clients can make the most money per unit.  We have lost track of the fact that those units are, in fact, animals.  Veterinarians should be leaders in this area....we know better and yet we are following - following the big Ag money.   Being led along by our noses in the hopes that we, too, might make a bigger piece of the pie at the expense of all those that we are supposed to be minding the welfare of - the animals and, as a result of that, the people that eat them.

Take a stand.  Will it mean money lost? Probably! Will it mean healthier animals and people? Absolutely! And the people that are waking up to this monstrosity will flock to your doors and beg to learn what you can teach them, or beg for the services of the veterinarians that you graduate.  Be the leader again, please, so that I can once again feel pride at calling you my Alma mater rather than cringing when someone points out that, once again, there is a food recall or thousands of eggs that have been contaminated and the only option is to simply throw more antibiotics or more federal regulations at them. 

We need small farmers in Iowa - not corporate giants.  Iowa is a dying state.  Most of these students that you are teaching right now will likely flee these borders like so many rats from a sinking ship. Wonder why there are a dwindling number of food animal veterinarians? I don't. With corporate giants running the show, how many vets do they really need? There are more large production units and more CAFOs in Iowa than in several of the surrounding states, there is more transgenic corn and soybeans grown here than almost anywhere else.  We need to diversify. 



My own role in this has been to conduct some of my own experiments. Once again you taught me to pay attention and keep records and for this, I thank you.  I can honestly say that there is a clear, distinguishable difference between the eggs that are raised in confined "caged batteries of birds" vs those from my flock of free range hens. I also raise a few pigs, a dairy cow and we buy all our beef from a local farmer that raises them on pasture.  The differences in our food quality and thus our health are substantial. And by supporting local farmers I am helping to ensure that small town Iowa actually has a chance to survive.

I realize that I will very likely not be high on the list to win any of the prestigious awards distributed to the "good soldiers" of the veterinary profession, but it is my honest belief that if you don't periodically stir the pot, all the scum rises to the top. I feel it is my obligation, as outlined by the oath, to continue the improvement of my professional knowledge and competence and so I put this challenge to you as directly as possible.....Lead, don't cave into big agriculture corporations that threaten to undermine this profession and ruin the trust that the populace has previously had in the veterinary community.  Lead, find a better way, a more humane way, a more sustainable way to raise the food that we need to live on.  Lead, so that others will actually want to follow. 

The Darkest Day

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_102.html

We are quickly approaching that time of year again.  And, no, I don't mean the time of year that involves elves in red suits, flying reindeer, nativity scenes, bell ringers or carols.  I mean the time of year when the terra firma that we stand on every single day is angled as far away from the sun (or toward it if you are below the equator) as it will be for the entire year.  The day is as dark as it will be for this year's race around the sun. 

Every day, whether we think of it or not, we are cruising through space at a fairly consistent pace of roughly 67,062 miles per hour, not to mention that the Earth itself is rotating at the same time at roughly 1100 miles per hour (this, of course, depends upon your particular latitude, but for middle America, it is roughly 1100 miles per hour).  Taking those two speeds and revolutions into consideration suddenly makes even the wildest rides at the amusement park seem like child's play.

Now, add in the fact that it has all been going on for approximately 4.5 billion years without significant change or alterations and I find myself standing outside at night looking at the stars with  my mouth agape in complete amazement.  The concept of time is completely lost on humans.  We have no grasp of what billions of years means.  One year?.... yeah, that's understandable.  Ten years?....well, most of us can look back that far and, ironically most of the time we say something like, "Wow! Where did all that time go?"  or "If only I knew then what I know now."  Fifty years? ....We see marriages that have lasted that long and, if you are like me, you say "I wonder how they did it?"  A hundred years?.....This is about the level that humans can reasonably be expected to comprehend on a personal level.  Beyond this point, it becomes antiquity, mystery, mythical.  We may know stories and have a few artifacts, but we really have absolutely no physical idea of how life was several hundreds of years ago much less 4 billion.  I would even hazard to say that the average person, if tossed back in time a few hundred years, would not have the first clue about how to survive using only their wits and the tools afforded them by the Earth itself.  The learning curve in the wild is pretty ruthless.

We, as humans, have lost touch with the Earth.  Oh, we use it daily - we drag coal and oil out of its depths and we haul the fish from its sea and crowd cows, chickens and pigs into insanely small spaces and force the Earth to grow crops that we then rob for our own uses.  We get the Earth to do our bidding and then we all happily go home to our houses, warmed during these cold, dark months with all the oil and coal, turn on our televisions to yet another ridiculous reality show, eat our overly processed, artificially raised food, and then go to bed so we can do it all again the next day. 

Pretty depressing, isn't it?  Sorry about that.  And, to be fair, there are more and more people doing what they can to help the cause, but many days it seems woefully ineffective.

I battle with this "woefully ineffective" thing myself.....all the time.  Sometimes I chalk it up to seasonal effective disorder, but mainly it is just do to the world in general.  Regardless of my mental state, I try to remember that this change in the seasons is a good thing.  Winter is a time for reflection and hibernation which seems to eventually eliminate the depression and readies a person for spring.  I find I can read and digest more books in the winter months than any other time of year. 

One especially good one that I have been working my way through is Folks, This Ain't Normal  by Joel Salatin.  If anyone thinks that I am hard core about living on a farm sustainably, Joel puts me to shame.  I honestly wish I could convince everyone to read this book because he not only understands and talks about farming sustainably, but he does it and proves that it can work on a larger scale.  Much of his emphasis is on treating the earth with respect and being creative in how we solve problems such as energy, food production, water conservation and housing.  There are a few New Year's resolutions that are forming based on this book alone. 

Another book that I am reading is The Joys of Beekeeping by Richard Taylor.  I have been reading a few bee books, but upon opening this one and reading, "The thrill and fascination that filled me then as I watched large swarms stream into hives has never weakened....It follows exactly the pattern established millions of years ago...We see only a small part of the surface of things.  The rest will be forever hidden from us, to be appreciated for its felt but unfathomed presence."  In short, he had me at 'hello'.

I realize that my choice of writers has a lot to do with the level of connectedness that they feel - not just to the subject that they are talking about, but to the earth as a whole.  Emma Restall Orr wrote:  "Perceiving the world as a web of connectedness helps us to overcome the feelings of separation that hold us back and cloud our vision. This connection with all life increases our sense of responsibility for every move, every attitude, allowing us to see clearly that each soul does indeed make a difference to the whole.”  

Those "feelings of separation" are one of the problems with today's society. People no longer feel connected.....to anything.  Ironically, despite e-mail and twitter and facebook, we are all much more disconnected from each other and from nature.  It really isn't natural to sit in front of a computer screen all day and remotely learn about things happening somewhere else when our world - the only one that we will be able to actually touch and physically interact with - lives outside of our house.  

People live for connection with the world around them - eye contact, hugs, relationships.  Without it we are only so much protoplasm walking around without aim or purpose.  It costs nothing to pay attention to other living beings that share this Earth as well- animals, trees, insects - and often these connections prove to be sometimes deeper and more profound than our human ones.  So, as the earth rounds the corner yet again and makes its way back into the hours of daylight, my hope for everyone this year is this.... May you find a connection with some part of the earth around you - be it a roof top garden somewhere in the city, a farmer at a local market, a stray cat that adopts you, the bees in an apiary, the moon coursing through the night sky, or your neighbor next door.  Make this year count because you just never know......maybe the Mayans were right.

Guarding the Night

Of course I always have ideas of blog posts in the middle of the night.  This one came to me sometime deep in the night as I heard my faithful dog barking at the unknown entity in the darkness, keeping watch.

There are many dark and scary beings that roam the countryside.  Many people have visions of the idyllic country life and all the fun farm animals that are raised in green pastures with white trimmed fences, but at night the landscape changes quite a little and now the advantage goes to those animals that were bred for the night.  Around here we have it pretty easy - coyotes, raccoons, skunks, opossums, fox, eagles, owls and the very occasional mountain lion that roams through.....those comprise most of the predator animals that we have to contend with.  Deer, although technically not a predator animal, are fairly predatory when it comes to vegetable gardens.   We, however, have a secret weapon against those beings that reign in the darkness. 

Gina.

Gina came to us under some amount of duress - Keith didn't want her around and I did - and so has it continued for the last four years, but with some amount of compromise, it all works out.  Gina works the third shift around our farm.  When the rest of us are heading in for the night, she goes on duty and then, as the sun comes up, she heads for her kennel where she sleeps the day away in the straw and sunshine.  She is a breed of dog that was bred for guard duty - half Pyrenees and half Golden Retriever she has a thick coat that protects her even in the worst of the weather.  She is at her happiest when there is new snow on the ground. 

Unless it is raining, I really have no idea what Gina does all night.  I know that she probably goes walkabout once in a while and I know for a fact that she sometimes brings home what she considers a tasty treat, but by any human standards (including mine) it would turn your stomach.   Once I even came across a raccoon that apparently met its doom at Gina's jaws. Many times she will be asleep on our porch, but any noise at all will send her rocketing off in full alarm mode any hour of the night....unless it rains.    When it is raining, I know right where she is....under the porch.

Gina hates thunderstorms and has carved out quite a den for herself under our porch where she rides out the flashing and booming.  When it is really cold out, she crawls under the porch and sleeps in the window well next to the wood burning stove - the window there likely stays very warm and it isn't unusual to see her and a few cats piled up enjoying the warmth.  On the very coldest of nights, when it dips into the double digits below zero, Gina gets to spend the night in the shop in the garage where the temp is kept a stable 32 degrees throughout the winter. 

Being a veterinarian, I personally know several people that would consider this horrible treatment of a dog.  I know many a pampered pooch that gets the prime sleeping spot on the bed and gets fed entirely too many table scraps.  I know dogs that are people's children and, from a business perspective, this is just fine by me, but dogs and humans have a very long, complex and symbiotic relationship that has allowed both of us to move forward. 

Wolves, in their domestication of man....because yes, it really did work that way in my mind....they trained us that if they hung out and kept danger away and worked to help us round up animals while hunting, then they too would benefit by having a place to sleep and some food tossed their way once in a while. Suddenly, dogs opened whole new avenues of life up for people - we could hunt better, we could control grazing animals better, we could avoid being eaten by cave bears better. But don't get me wrong - these were the dogs that could take or leave us - they didn't need us to survive, we were just a helpful ally with opposable thumbs to them.  Today's dog is much more dependent.  We have bred them to maintain their juvenile qualities longer, thereby never gaining their complete adult independence from us.  We have tamed the wildness down quite a lot.  In the case of the Pug....maybe a little too much.  But then again, they have domesticated us as well - we now have dogs that are members of the family and enjoy all the privileges that go along with that.  Good food, soft bed, warm house, drives in the car, walks in the park........  Something gained, something lost - there are always trade offs.  Gina, however, has a fairly good mix of domestication and wildness about her.

Gina has a job to do.  This is important in the dog community.  All too often I will see pampered pets that have every convenience given to them get themselves in huge trouble with their happy homeowner because they destroy things in the house, or eat things, or jump on people, or bark.  This is a dog's way of saying "I'm bored and I want something to do."  Gina takes her job very seriously - she is the mobile fence on our farm.  If I had to build a 6 foot fence around everything I grow to keep it safe from the deer - the farm would look like a penitentiary.  Just having her around to let the riff raff know
there is a dog on the premises is enough to make them keep a respectable distance.

The cats, however, take some liberties and move in for a quick bite at the kibble bowl once in a while.  Gina tolerates this with a certain amount of aplomb.  She acknowledges the cat while quietly wagging her tail and then promptly eats the entire bowl of food to prevent any more cat shenanigans

She has free reign.  Dogs are smart - very smart.  They know where home is - where the food bowl lives, so I don't worry about her wandering off too far. But she does love to ride in cars.  Recently, one morning when I was due to put her in the kennel for the day, I couldn't find her anywhere.  Walked and called, walked and called.  Drove around the block looking for signs of her.  Walked through the woods looking for her.  Nothing.   Finally, just about at the point of calling the shelters, neighbors, and surrounding vet clinics, I realized that my sister's car was parked across the road at her business and that the back hatch was open.  On a whim, I went to inspect.  Sure enough, she was sitting up in the driver's seat looking at me with her dog grin, panting, "Come on! I have been waiting to go for ride for hours! What took you so long." 

Gina also gets to commune with the wild side of the canine family.  We have entirely  too many coyotes that roam the area, but thankfully, she is large enough that no coyote in its right mind would take her on in a fight, and they give her wide berth by staying out of her territory, but they do have an odd sort of communication.  Listening to a pack of coyotes on any night is enough to give a person the chills, but listening to your own dog raise her nose to the sky and howl in one long, plaintive cry back at them will make every hair stand on end - it is so eerie, primordial and, in some ways, heart wrenching. 

I believe that a dog, at least once a day, should be told that they are a "good dog"  - it keeps their tail limber with the wagging that you receive in return.  My kids have a chore (although it hardly classifies as a chore) to go out and let Gina out during the day for a while so she gets a little human interaction.  Watching her romp and play with the kids and watching them throw their arms around her shaggy neck and bury their faces in her fur is one of the highlights of my day....and her's....and my kid's.  Dogs have a wonderful, sponge-like ability to absolve you of your worse moods.  They are always happy to see you no matter what a rotten day it has been.  They don't notice the scowl that you might wear on your face that sends your family running the other direction - or if they do, they don't care.  They still come up to you, tail wagging and eager to give love and attention without  expecting anything in return.  I think it is this guilelessness, this simplicity of a dog that makes them the object of so much attention and love - people always want something in return.  If only people could learn one more thing from a dog...become just a little more domesticated themselves....this would be a good thing to learn.

It is getting late.  My dog alarm has set out barking several times already as I have finished typing this up, no doubt to send whatever small carnivores scurrying in the other direction away from our farm.  I will rest easy tonight knowing that we are guarded faithfully by my furry comrade and that, come morning, I will be met with a wagging tail and excessive gratitude at receiving her bowl of food and the five small words that make her day...."Good dog, Gina.  Good dog."