Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
Euthanasia and aftercare options for livestock with Dr. Warren Hess
Join us for a discussion about options for euthanasia techniques and aftercare in small ruminants and other livestock species with Dr. Warren Hess, the assistant director of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA)'s Division of Animal and Public Health and AVMA's Disaster Coordinator.
In this episode, Dr. Hess discusses the results of a survey investigating veterinary knowledge surrounding safe carcass disposal after pentobarbital euthanasia. Dr. Hess highlights the concerns regarding pentobarbital use in livestock as it severely limits the disposal options that clients have. Animals that are euthanized using this very commonly used substance may not be used for rendering and burial may result in contamination of groundwater with this toxic compound. The AVMA and AASRP are working to expand veterinarians' understanding of alternative humane euthanasia techniques including gunshot or captive bolt (followed by secondary method) or magnesium sulfate injection. While intrathecal lidocane injection is not currently an approved method of euthanasia by AVMA, it is becoming more widely practiced by equine and food animal practitioners.
The publication describing the survey which is the focus of today's episode can be found here:
https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/261/11/javma.23.03.0161.xml
If your company or organization would like to sponsor an episode or if you have questions about today's show, please email Office@AASRP.org
Hello, and welcome to the next episode of AASRP's podcast, Foz and Bleats. Today we're talking to Dr. Warren Hess. Dr. Hess is the associate director and the disaster coordinator for AVMA which is the American Vet Med Association. For my non vet listeners, let me just give you a little blurb about AVMA and Dr. Hess. Please. add anything you want. Basically, AVMA is kind of the biggest organization in vet med. A lot of us turn to AVMA for insurance, lobbying best practices. A lot of times, if you have a question about anything, the AVM website is super helpful hiring. I mean, there's just so many things that I've gone to AVMA, for help. I've been to lots of their CE meetings, which are really good. So they, they, lobbying is a huge thing they do for us. They protect the veterinary interest in in Washington. So welcome, Dr. Hess. Thank you so much for being here and chatting with us.
Warren:Hey, thank you, Sarah. I'm happy to be with you.
Sarah:Great. I always like to start with everybody's history, kind of where you went to school, how you got to the place you're, you're at. Do you mind sharing with us a little bit?
Warren:Sure. I am a Colorado State graduate from 1989. That's a long time ago. I practiced about 17 years in private practice, a small animal and exotic focused, and and then spent 11 years with the Veterinarian State Office in the state of Utah served various roles there from a field veterinarian to assistant state veterinarian to acting state veterinarian for a year and a half before I left and came to work for the AVMA. I've been here about almost nine years now and it's been great. AVMA is a great organization to work for and to be a member of.
Sarah:All right. So did you do both your undergrad and vet school at Colorado?
Warren:I actually did my undergrad at the University of Utah and at Brigham Young University.
Sarah:Okay. Nice. So today we're going to be talking to Dr. Hess about his 2023 paper entitled Survey of Veterinarians Who Use Pentobarbital for Euthanasia Suggests Knowledge Gaps Regarding Animal Disposal. This was published in the Journal of the JAVMA, we call it the Journal of AVMA. And the reason I asked Dr. Hess here is this is just such an important topic for those of you who may or may not know, 50 percent of my practice is in home euthanasia for cats and dogs. So between my large animal half and that, I do a lot of end of life consulting with people and all sorts of things. So This topic is something I spend a lot of time talking about. And I think it's really important for our listeners, not only the veterinarians, but also our farmers and practitioners and everybody out there to kind of hear this topic. It's important for us as veterinarians, not only to be stewards of our animals, but also of the environment and the stuff that we are actively putting drugs out and into. So I read this survey right after it came out And I just, I think it's a really interesting topic. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how this survey came about and what kind of initiated this?
Warren:Sure, Sarah while I'm the corresponding author on this document or sorry, we cut that out on this article there are a lot of other important, People at ABMA and also I'll mention some affiliation we had so getting to your question as far as how did this come about? This has been many years in the making back in about twenty eighteen. AVMA started corresponding with the Renderers Association for those that are listening that aren't familiar with Renderers rendering companies take dead animal carcasses and Process them to further utilize the nutrients that could come from those, and those are utilized in, in various ways. So the rendering companies came to us and with the information that they were running into some serious problems with some residues from a drug agent that we use, pentobarbital, for euthanasia. And the FDA does not allow any level of pentobarbital in any food item. So, the even tiny amounts of residue that testing is very sensitive now can pick up extremely small amounts of pentobarbital. These companies were finding that in their products, they were having to discard large amounts of products, they were having to completely clean their whole system out to try to, to get rid of that. It was costing some of these companies. You know, upwards of a million dollars to purge their system once it was detected, and they're having to test on for this on a regular basis. Every batch they produce has to be tested for for pentobarbital. So discussions began back then and have continued over the years, and what that led to was a grant that FDA put out and AVMA was a sub awardee in that grant to look at trying to find out what veterinarians knew about pentobarbital residue issues and what their And you know, how they handled euthanasias and disposals and things like that, so that we could get a better idea of maybe where some of the problems are and why some of the safeguards that have been put in place aren't, aren't working the way they need to.
Sarah:I'm just wondering a little bit more, and I guess I didn't tell you I was going to ask you this, but about the rendering. Kind of across the country because I mean, I grew up, this was the nineties in the central Valley of California and a cow would die and they would put it out by the road and the render would come. And then by the time I was in high school and college, that was no longer a thing. And here in Western New York, I don't know anybody who renders. I don't think any, any animals go to rendering, which I think is kind of sad because I love the thought that every bit of every animal gets used. Which, you know, most dairy cows that pass here, get composted. So is rendering kind of different laws in different states? Does it depend on where you live in that state?
Warren:So, there's different types of rendering companies out there that focus on certain things. So, for example, with slaughter plants that that process meat for us. The remnants from that, the bones and and so on that aren't gonna be utilized for human food are usually disposed of in, in some method and in, in many areas, certainly in the Midwest and the west. Rendering companies are still used for those. And they get a lot of product from that, and so they can produce bone meal and things like that from the bones that, uh, that are being that are not being used by the slaughter company. As far as whole dead animals, that Especially since 2018, that has been decreasing significantly and many rendering companies will only pick up dead animals, whole dead carcasses from some of these plants when the animals didn't make it into the plant for whatever reason. The Accepting or taking or even picking up animals from farms has decreased dramatically.
Sarah:And that's
Warren:true across the country and is causing issues for a lot of animal owners, especially equine owners who are trying to find reasonable methods of disposing of their, of their horses.
Sarah:Know here. And this is probably true across the country. There aren't a lot of options for horse owners there. One of my good friends does a has a business transporting deceased pets. And, you know, they can go to Cornell for cremation. I think here, just south of Buffalo, we have another place that's set up that can cremate and they have one place that buries. So basically, if you don't know someone who has a backhoe, you're kind of in trouble. And here, half the year, just like where you live in Illinois you know, the ground is frozen. And so it makes it very, very difficult.
Warren:Yeah, you've got to have some pretty heavy duty hydraulic equipment to break through frozen ground.
Sarah:So jumping into the paper. So you guys just kind of wanted to see how much people knew. So you sent this survey out to kind of a select group of AVMA members not the whole like 100, 000
Warren:We wanted to get representation from certain segments of, of the veterinary profession.
Sarah:And so you had, I don't know, is this a good response? You had like, what was it? 2, 000 people.
Warren:I think it was about a 12 percent response, if I recall correctly, and for AVMA surveys, that's actually a pretty decent we probably average about 9 to 10 percent on most of our surveys.
Sarah:Okay, so about 2, 000 people responded and it was like when you start looking at the results there is a you know a good I mean, obviously the most are small animal, but that's the most of veterinarians, but you know The large animals even the exotics as this is a SRP a pretty good Showing from they have it split where farm cervids and camelids are one group and sheep and goat are another. Those are probably the same vets, but people could check multiple boxes. So and probably a lot of those people are seeing cows also and pigs. So they probably overlap a bit there too. But so people responded and I mean, we don't need to go distinctly into each question, but you know, the questions were a lot about basically, what do you know, like, what do you tell people who you do euthanasias for? What do you know is safe? And it's not safe.
Warren:Yeah, we wanted to, we wanted to get a broad idea about the whole process of, from, from the point in time when a decision is being made about euthanasia, all the way through following through with the disposal. Aspects, what are veterinarians doing? What are their views on certain things? Because we, we knew that that was going to help us in future educational efforts.
Sarah:So tell us about the results. I know the paper focuses on a lot of things that's significant and not significant, which is important, but was there stuff you were really surprised about, was there stuff that you kind of tracked, I mean, I don't want to, you know, throw any veterinarians under the bus here of what we don't do and don't know, but it's important to point it out. I think not many small animal vets probably think about this because the pets just get cremated or people take them home. I don't think it's. You know, and a 20 pound dog is not going to pollute the ground like a 2000 pound horse, right?
Warren:Yeah, we weren't you know, terribly surprised by any of the results. I think they, they all made sense. And we did find that small animal practitioners. Had the least knowledge about the effects of pentobarbital, and had the least knowledge about a wide variety of disposal techniques, like you indicated probably in most cases they're sending out those to a crematory probably. And or having owners bury their own animals. We also it wasn't surprising to us that practitioners that practiced in, in real specific areas, so like the bovine practitioners those that practiced equine medicine only And you know poultry veterinarians, things like that, that swine veterinarians. In some of those practices, penobarbital is just not used at all. In other practices, it is used. For example, in equine, it's used still pretty heavily. And the practitioners that only practiced equine medicine that was their sole focus, tended to be better educated on the impacts of pentobarbital and being, having more of a system in place to make sure that how the animal was disposed of was, was overseen correctly. What a lot of small animal veterinarians and some of our mixed animal veterinarians were the next group next to the small animal veterinarians who showed that there was some education that was, was still needed for them. So that was the real bottom line of the, of the survey information that we got was, there's a couple of targeted areas of types of practitioners that we need to especially focus on getting further education out to them. What's interesting about the survey to me is that. We've identified a problem, but we don't have a real clear solution to the problem. In other words, pentobarbital is going to continue to be used, although in some species it might decrease quite a bit over time as other options become available. But in small animal medicine it's probably not gonna change anytime soon unless some other chemical options come out. And this study and some subsequent studies that, that are being done you know, might drive some people some of our researchers into looking for other options.
Sarah:That'd be amazing. Yeah, I'm just going to take a step back. One other thing with rendering. One of the reason that we have to be so careful, which people may not know is that tons of that bone meal and stuff is going into pet food. And so a lot of times it's our pets that if the pento barbital gets through that it makes them sick. And that almost never happens. Cause like you said, there is. It's so much testing, but it, it has happened in the past. And so it's very important that we work as a whole team from the pet owner, the veterinarian to the rendering plants, the slaughter facilities to keep the pets safe. So I just wanted to make sure that. People understood the significance of there that it doesn't, it doesn't go away in the rendering process. It can live through that. So
Warren:yeah, in the last, though, let's say 10, maybe eight years, there's been a number of situations where kind of Barbara tall's gotten into pet food. One of them, actually led to the death of some animals and that didn't go through a rendering plant. That was whole meat that somehow slipped through the safeguards that are supposed to be there to make sure that an animal that's euthanized with pentobarbital doesn't get into any kind of a food source. Whether human or animal, and that didn't happen in this case, and it ended up. Going into some dog food and dogs actually got enough of the pentobarbital, they died from it. The cases where it's gone through a rendering plant those cases animals did not get sick, but there were organizations out there that were looking for it and testing the dog food and have found it and as it was, was traced back, it was traced back to some of the rendering products. So while it is a big problem for renderers, you know, the chance of an animal actually getting sick or dying through a rendered product is pretty low. But it, we still need to solve the problem with rendering.
Sarah:Right, right. And, I just had this thought, I wonder, you know, there's such a huge new movement in small animal food about with fresh food, raw food, people making their own food. You know, that that worries me that like, you know, they'll get animals from, unregulated sources which would be the fear. So beyond, you know, the rendering being a huge, huge deal. The other real issue is the environmental impact of the pentobarb in the ground and getting into waterways. And. Also wildlife, right? So these are some of the other big issues.
Warren:Yes. And there was actually a companion article printed in JAVMA prior to the one we're talking about. It was a literature review of the impacts of pentobarbital. And pentobarbital does not break down. No. In animals or in the environment and so it will maintain its, its ability to produce the effects that it does for a long time. I mean, everything eventually breaks down. So when I say it doesn't break down, I mean, it takes years and years and years for pentobarbital to break down. And rendering temperatures, which tend to get up into like the 140, 140 degree Fahrenheit range, doesn't break it down probably much higher does, you know, the temperatures reached in, in the cremation probably break it down pretty well, but the temperatures reached in, composting, Don't break it down either. And so if there's large volumes of that, that can, that will have impacts on local, micro animal life in the area in the microbes, in the soils, if it leaks into waterways, it can have impacts on aquatic life as well.
Sarah:Right. Yeah. So. Besides furthering education, trying to get the word out, talking to people about, you know, how they bury their pets the other push I know has been to try to get away from using it, especially in the large animals as much as possible. And I know there are options in large animal. Not a lot. There are some AVMA has a really good stuff on their website about acceptable forms of euthanasia. Obviously, you know, gunshot wound done correctly. Um, captive bolt. That's primarily what the swine industry uses. But one thing we've been really pushing in the small ruminant world, along with equine and other ones, is the intrathecal lidocaine injection.
Warren:And that's, you know, completely understandable. You know, as you mentioned, gunshot captive bolts are, are, are great methods, but there's a lot of veterinarians out there that refuse to use those. In addition to probably most owners don't want that method used, although it's probably one of the most effective and cleanest ways to go as far as environmental impact when I say cleanest.
Sarah:And I would add it's very humane.
Warren:Yes. In the, in the proper hands, it's very humane. And so if there's some owners out there listening that would even consider it and your veterinarian offers that as, as a method, I would Suggest you consider that and, aside from costs and everything I owned horses for a lot of years, And I would use captive bolt on my horses when I put them down, And That was the, the method I preferred had far fewer problems than trying to inject the pentobarbital in them which led to, you know, you don't see a lot of problems with that, but you do see some and see more with that, with pentobarbital actually than you do with gunshot or captive bull.
Sarah:I had a goat client, just as an example, reach out to me. They had a horse that was down and needed to be euthanized. And it was like. They live in the middle of nowhere. It was a huge snow storm. They know they didn't have a regular vet. I don't know. And they're just like, I don't know what to do. And I was like, I know you hunt, why don't you just shoot it and put it out of your misery? And she literally acted like she'd never heard that as an option for a horse. And I was like, I know your husband can do this. Like, I don't understand why you're hesitating. And she's just like. It never crossed my mind. I never would have thought of doing that to my own horse. And I'm just like, but like as a hunter, you know, it's humane, right? You know that it's fast and it's easy and it's, you know, and like, I could tell, I just like lifted this huge burden off her shoulder to put it as a way that she, her and her husband could do it themselves. It wasn't. It wasn't unkind to the horse and this horse was already down. So it wasn't even going to fall or anything. And you know, I just, I think in the pet world, it's just, it's such a different thought process for sure. Yeah. And then I don't know a better option in small animal. You know, when you are euthanizing cats and dogs, and especially I live in a very rural part of New York. I don't know exactly how to keep it out of the ground with these. I don't know if you have any suggestions. You know, I talked to them about burying it super deep, not going anywhere near waterways. Are there any, does AV may have any other suggestions for those kind of scenarios?
Warren:Well, for the veterinarians listening, I think it's important that we remind ourselves that we are responsible for the impacts of that drug that we put into that animal, even after it leaves our office. So, we need to be doing our best to make sure that if clients are taking animals home to dispose of, that they have a very clear understanding and that you trust them as a client to follow your directions. You know, the, we, we see the cases where they take them home and they you know, they're going to get to it and Something comes up and the animal's out there for three or four days before they can get it buried. And by that time birds of prey or other carnivores have come in and attacked it. And you know, so we get that impact. The other thing I would say is that the total pentobarbital burden through all the small animals that get put down. Get euthanized with kind of our orbital is probably much greater if all that went into the environment than it is for the horses that get. that get euthanized just because you've got so many more small animals pets where that's happening. So from a pet perspective, if pentobarbital is going to be used, and I'm sure it will be, uh, it's probably just one more reason to encourage your clients to consider cremation for their animals rather than burial.
Sarah:Right. Right. Agreed. Yeah. And I mean, there, All the new options, like water cremation and stuff like that are great. They're just still so pricey. But it's, it's definitely hard for some of our clients. Do you know, off the top of your head, does AVMA have a printable form that small animal or even small ruminant vets could send home with owners? I'm talking about the proper way to dispose and the environmental impact, like something that's just printable.
Warren:We're actually working on that. Both, both basically cards that could, that the veterinarians could use for themselves and also client material to take home when we we hope that later this year we'll have those available.
Sarah:I think that would be a good asset. And That's something I probably should add to my small ruminant practice because I, or my, my in home euthanasia practice, because I do, I always talk to them if they're not, if I'm not taking the pet to the crematory, I always talk to them about, you know, appropriate and stuff, but even doing it appropriately, you're still doing it. You're still putting it into the ground. You still are knowingly polluting. And I know one of the questions on the survey was, As a veterinarian, do you know state laws? Do you know federal laws? Well, it's really hard to know that because they're really, really hard to find. And it's not even state and county. Sometimes it's like local districts. It's all different. And so when people ask me, is it legal to bury where I live? And I'm like, I don't even know because I have tried and tried and tried to look and educate myself and it's next to impossible to find it online. I mean, maybe if you started calling offices, but to find the person that knows, I think would even be hard.
Warren:You're absolutely right. And, you know, even when you get down to the local level it's going to probably depend on, on the size of the lot you're on how it's zoned, and how many animals might be approved, you know. Be approved to be buried in on that lot over a certain period of time. So it, it gets really complicated, really fast. And it's, it's not something that the veterinarian can keep up on than to know where to help to point the client for some better information. And we're trying to, we're trying to do our best to make that a little bit easier.
Sarah:Great. Great. Yeah. Keep us posted. All right. We didn't talk a huge amount about the survey. I kind of just wanted to delve into this topic in general. And the survey is just such a good way to start conversation and realize that we don't know what we don't know. Right? And I know, I know the DEA is pushing for more CE. That's more on the opiate side. It'd be nice if, you know, it would, this would be included. But was there anything else from the survey or from this topic at all that you think needs to be addressed?
Warren:I don't think so. I, I think just talking about it bringing it out in the open Letting people know we don't have all the answers yet, but that doesn't mean we need to, you know, we need to hide the issue. Let's talk about it. Clients know what we know, what we don't know, and hopefully that can spur some more research on and, you know, help us all out no matter, no matter what area we might be concerned about as far as the impacts of these drugs that, that might have on the environment, on other animals that might come in contact with them, you know, in an unintended method.
Sarah:Right. Yeah. The last thing you want to do is bury your goat improperly and have your neighbor's dog die. Nobody wants that. Well, Dr. Hess, I really appreciate you being here. And I don't know if you read my final question. It doesn't apply to you as much as the other people. But I think we definitely You know, you've kind of already touched on some stuff. So my normal final question is, what do you see is the next problem that researchers need to think about and address in small ruminant medicine? And, you know, definitely. It can be in this line that we're talking today, but what, what do we need to look at who needs, where do we need to throw some research money?
Warren:Hey, I'll I'll tell you what I think just because of one of my titles is disaster coordinator for, for AVMA and we need to find better information and better options for, Small hobby farmers, which is probably the bulk of, of, of your clients, I would guess what they can do to better prepare for disasters and not be, not be totally unprepared on what they can do, you know, what What do they need to consider if a wildfire were to come upon their area which can be some of the really short notice type stuff where you don't have a lot of time, um, hurricanes, you typically have a few days, if not a week or so to, to. Get prepared, but there's, there's, there needs to be better information better studies done, better research on how we can help these hobby farms be better prepared because they frequently are, are found in the group that aren't prepared when they have to evacuate.
Sarah:It scares me when I have clients who can't transport their own animals. It's one thing if you have 5, 000 cows, but if you have six goats, you need to have a way to move them.
Warren:That's right. And that, that, that is one of the biggest factors of just having transportation, but Also having the animals accustomed to being transported is, is another big thing and being able to get them loaded in a trailer when things are crazy, when there's a smell of smoke in the air, for example, and a lot of animals are, are pretty unsettled with that. It's, it's not your everyday calm. Load an animal in a trailer process.
Sarah:Yeah, that's a really good, really good point. Well again, I thank you so much. This is a little bit different of a podcast for us, but I think it's important topic. I think it's important for our veterinarians to hear. It's important for our producers to hear. So, like I said, if you need to learn a new euthanasia method, don't be scared. Maybe AASRP needs to do a webinar on this. I think that'd be a good topic. I think it's something that we really need to push. I know the equine world has been really working on it. And I'm one of those practitioners not willing to carry a gun. So maybe I need to think about that too. All right, well, thank you again. And I think with that, we are done for this month. Thanks guys.
Warren:Thanks Sarah.
