Fund Veterinary Care, Not Harmful Corporations
Veterinarians want vet care to be free too!
As the cost of veterinary care rises, taxpayers are forced to pay corporations billions of dollars to prop up business practices that cause large-scale animal disease and threaten public health and food security.
The National Institutes of Health spent $23 billion taxpayer dollars on animal research, while many people can’t afford existing diagnostics and treatments. If we increased access to health care for all species, how much pain and suffering could we relieve, and how many lives could we save? Ethical animal research exists, just like ethical human research exists, but we need to prioritize observational and clinical research. Access to care can work in alignment with ethical clinical research.
Americans spent $38 billion on veterinary care and products in 2023. But taxpayers were also forced to pay livestock and dairy corporations $38 billion each year to prop up these harmful businesses, whether we purchase these products or not.
Since 2022, taxpayers have spent more than $2 billion on the avian influenza outbreak, while poultry corporations received more than $800 million to bail them out after exterminating their flocks to stop the spread, while making record profits, generating billions in revenue and paying their CEOs millions of dollars.
Studies show that if we transitioned to animal-free food production, we would save $7.3 trillion globally in health burdens and ecosystem degradation.
What do you think? Would you support redistributing public funds away from harmful corporations and towards increasing access to healthcare?
If you are a veterinarian, would you support subsidized veterinary care for regular people instead of corporations? Would publicly funded spay/neuter, vaccinations, parasite prevention, and early treatment for illnesses ultimately reduce the number of more costly illnesses?
