The veterinary profession
Authors: David J Coffey
Journal: Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (2008)

The popular perception of the veterinary profession could be best described as doing for other animals what the medical profession does for humans. A very little thought, however, will rapidly dispel such a simplistic comparison. The guiding principle of the medical profession, the Hippocratic Oath, directs doctors to consider the life, health and welfare of each patient to be sacrosanct. The veterinary profession does not, and could not, conform to a similar moral imperative.

The veterinary profession was founded over 200 years ago by a group from the Odiham Agriculture Society who were fired with enthusiasm by the Enlightenment. It was thought that the application of scientific method to the treatment of injury and disease in animals would increase useful longevity for cavalry and transport horses, improve production and profits in agriculture and contribute to the understanding of zoonoses. Its function was to be unashamedly and unquestionably anthropocentric, concerned only to improve the fortunes of humanity. Any advantage for the welfare of animals was incidental.

Our relationship with other animals and the environment is, at the same time, both unique and biological: biological since we are obeying nature's inviolable directive to exploit the environment in which we find ourselves; and unique since no species has previously had the ability to control and modify that same environment as do we humans. It was our enhanced cerebral capacity, providing the ability to make tools and traps, that enabled our ancestors – for whatever reason – to leave the jungle and alter our diet to include meat. It was that same intellectual magnitude that was later to lead to the domestication of both animals and plants. Pastoralism, a word with an idyllic, nostalgic ring, was, in fact, an act of enslavement. The conditions in which domestic animals are kept are indistinguishable from, and indeed frequently far worse than, those forced on the African slaves in the southern states of America two centuries ago.


The veterinary equivalent to the Hippocratic Oath is the Declaration made by graduates on entering the profession. This states: 

Inasmuch as the privilege of membership of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons is about to be conferred upon me I promise and solemnly declare that I will abide in all due loyalty to the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and will do all in my power to maintain and promote its interests.

It continues: 

I promise above all that I will pursue the work of my profession with uprightness of conduct and that my constant endeavour will be to ensure the welfare of animals committed to my care.


Superficially reasonable, but it obfuscates a momentous moral dilemma. It ignores, as does the functioning profession, any attempt to consider the implications of the final phrase of the Declaration. Are members of the profession ‘…to ensure the welfare of animals’ or is their obligation restricted to those ‘…animals committed to my care’? This raises profound and far-reaching difficulties. What constitutes animal welfare?

The welfare of any animal is secure so long, and only so long, as it remains in harmony with the environment in which it finds itself. There is irrefutable evidence that domestication has not modified the potential for the behavioural and social expression characteristic of each ancestral species. The evidence is to be found in the many domestic animals that have escaped captivity to become feral and who then exhibit individual and social behaviour indistinguishable from that of their ancestors. Since domestication restricts freedom of expression and inhibits the potential for social intercourse it is an act of enslavement. Domestication is a euphemism for subjugation, humiliation and degradation. It follows that, however much the veterinary profession may attempt to ameliorate the detrimental effects of domestication, condoning and supporting it makes the profession a tool of animal oppression. The latter reality should, but rarely does, cause consternation in members of the profession who have pursued a veterinary career because they enjoy the company of animals and want to work with them. They are complicit by default in the abuse of animals.

If we are to unravel the moral and biological confusion which obstructs meaningful analysis of the human predicament and our relationship with the living world we must define objectives. Should we, with egocentric zeal, comply with nature's directive to exploit our environment by applying our singular attribute, our unique cerebral capacity, most notably manifest as our scientific and technical ingenuity, or should we recognize that without prescience the environmental consequences of any innovation this ingenuity devises and imposes are unknown until extant? Furthermore, science and technology lack coalescence. Fragmented discoveries by insular groups in divers disciplines are quite unable to comprehend the interactive complexity of their endeavours; unable to predict the totality of the environmental consequences.

Adaptability requires flexibility. Specialization means vulnerability. As our intellectual prowess, using its dubious scientific and technical tools, continues to construct an environment to which we appear increasingly maladapted, the future of our species appears to be precarious. Our difficulties began with pastoralism. Just as the agricultural enterprises in the southern states of America were facilitated by slaves from Africa, so human civilization was and remains dependent on the subjugation and enslavement of other sentient creatures. Is it not a sad and dreadful condemnation of our species?

Whilst contemporary generations cannot be held responsible for domestication and thus the enslavement of animals, we are most certainly guilty of egocentricity and selfish indifference to the suffering of its current victims. Tormented and tortured in laboratories, subject to horrendous physical restraint and social disruption in modern intensive agriculture, abused in equine, canine and other sporting activities, and maimed by selective breeding only to be further injured by genetic manipulation. Our pets are ineptly managed, inadequately fed on inappropriate, manufactured food, genetically modified to their detriment and sexually mutilated for our convenience, while social species are frequently isolated, all to gratify our apparent need for animated teddy bears.

The value of both medical and veterinary science for human survival are shrouded, a matter of conjecture, to be adjudicated by the indifferent but inviolable dictate of biology: adapt or die. The Hippocratic oath has moral (if questionable) survival value, but the Declaration veterinary graduates are required to make on entering the profession is at best delusional since its principle claim – to champion the welfare of animals – cannot be substantiated.

I should conclude that these observations are analytical, not judgemental. Polemic challenges to conventional philosophical positions or the adaptive value of both professions are rare indeed. As humanity plunges towards maladaption and therefore extinction, facilitated by our scientific and technical proficiency, perhaps a profound and penetrating discussion would be both pertinent and prudent.