Over the past several years, there has been a significant trend in the humanization of the pet food category. With words like "wholesome", "healthy" and "biologically appropriate" and marketing promises including "feed them like family", there's no wonder that consumers are spending on average 7% more since last year on their pets according to the American Pet Products Association. "No matter the primary cause of increased spending on pets, be it enhanced nutrition, better healthcare, increased pampering, or greater technology, the one thing we know for sure is that pet owners have a top priority in pursuing longer, healthier lives for their pets."

With 95% of pet owners considering their pet part of the family, Clean Label Project wanted to assess if brands were delivering on their marketing promises. Clean Label Project published a study in 2017 on the contents of America's best selling dry & wet dog foods, cat food and treats. As a follow-up to this investigation, Clean Label Project recently completed a study of top 100 selling prescription pet foods. When a pet necessitates a prescription pet food, it is often to ameliorate an acute or chronic health condition. It also commands a market premium of on average 40% more than traditional pet foods. We compared the test results for prescription pet food to traditional pet food for heavy metals, pesticide residues, plasticizers, melamine & its analogues, and acrylamide as well as the price point to identify the difference in product purity.

A One Health approach promotes collaboration, communication, and coordination across disciplines and sectors to more holistically understand and address health threats at the interfaces between sectors. Wider adoption of One Health approaches in human clinical care will require developing a capable workforce through educating and training health care providers in novel competencies and employing non-traditional pedagogical approaches. To explore ways to meaningfully involve and generate value for medical and other global health professionals, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine hosted in New York the conference “Application of the One Health Approach to Global Health Centers” in December 2018 in coordination with EcoHealth Alliance, which sought to bring together representatives from different areas of practice, often still working in sectoral or disciplinary siloes, to discuss critical issues and share examples of both challenges and successes in order to focus more attention on the One Health approach and guide application to both medical school curricula and clinical practice. To our knowledge, this represents the first One Health conference organized by a U.S. medical school and should trigger similar initiatives in other US medical schools as well as medical schools in other countries. We present four key objectives generated from the conference that provide opportunities to enhance involvement in and benefits from One Health for medical schools and global health centers, some readily available and some that may require cultivation. These include: 1) Improving One Health resource linking to the global health and medical community; 2) Developing innovative partnerships for improved health sector outcomes; 3) Creating pathways for effective information-sharing with the health community; and 4) Informing and empowering health advocacy.

The human-animal bond is of importance to the health and well-being of individuals, families and communities, with adoptions from animal shelters being an important component of such human-animal bonds. However, close contact with animals can increase the risk of exposure to both zoonotic and non-zoonotic infections, especially those in densely-housed settings. For cats, feline respiratory disease complex (FRDC) comprises a range of infectious disease agents that cause respiratory or ocular clinical signs: typically, feline herpesvirus-1 (FHV-1), feline calicivirus (FCV), Chlamydophila felis, Mycoplasma sp., and/or Bordetella bronchiseptica. Within a shelter environment, cats with FRDC may experience a prolonged length of stay and decreased rate of adoption, and can be a vehicle to spread the disease throughout the population. Diagnostic testing for the infectious agents associated with FRDC is not routinely performed in shelters and treatment is primarily based on clinical signs. If treatment is mismanaged, this can contribute to development of antibiotic resistant organisms. In this study, swabs were collected from the conjunctiva, nasal cavity, and oropharyngeal region of healthy cats, cats experiencing clinical signs associated with FRDC and cats diagnosed with feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) (a disease process where respiratory or ocular clinical signs are present early on). Diagnostic testing using viral isolation or PCR was performed on the swabs to detect the agents associated with FRDC, in addition to other potential respiratory agents that could be implicated in the clinical signs observed. Our studies provide a framework for assessing diagnostic testing protocols in animal shelters.

Telemedicine, or telehealth, is the practice of caring for patients remotely without all parties being physically present at the same time. Telemedicine in veterinary medicine is on the rise and predicted to fill a rural practice resource gap. The practice of veterinary medicine relies on the veterinary-client-patient-relationship (VCPR) being established prior to diagnosing, prescribing, and treating; the practice of veterinary medicine. At the same time, public awareness and pressure to address antibiotic and opioid overuse and abuse is widespread. Because of this, state veterinary medical boards are grappling with the legal parameters and constraints under which veterinary telemedicine can operate. The American Veterinary Medical Association’s (AVMA) telemedicine position statement states, in part, that prescribing susequent to a telemedicine session be restricted only to those clients with an active VCPR. Other state and professional organizations hold more liberal views to the practice. This presentation will help participants understand the complexity of the VCPR and practice of veterinary medicine using telemedicine, with particular emphasis on prescribing and the pressing issues of antibiotic and opioid overuse and abuse.