Good nutrition and the judicious use of vaccinations and various preventive medicines have done much to improve the health and longevity of cats, and dogs as well as humans and other animals. But many health problems are now associated with various commercial, highly processed foods, and a host of complex diseases have been linked to adverse reactions in dogs and cats, as well as human infants and other species, to what were formerly considered safe and necessary vaccinations. Other serious health problems in companion animals have come from long-term administration of steroid drugs, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents, and systemic insecticides, the misuse and overuse of which I find deeply disturbing.

Some critics simply blame "big business" and the profit motives of a market-driven economy for the all the ills of society. But this view, in part affirmed by the reticence of the food and drug industries to acknowledge responsibility and not dismiss or evade the clinical evidence that would mean more costs to them in having to either improve the quality, safety and effectiveness of their products, or take them off the market, is only half the truth. What we have done to the environment, and to our increasingly contaminated food and water chains, as well as to air quality, are as much to blame for many of the diseases that we face today in our companion animals, in wildlife, and in our own lives.

So it is ultimately up to all of us consumers and care-providers to make the most informed choices that we can about food, nutrition, and health care maintenance and disease prevention. As I show in my books Eating With Conscience: the Bioethics of Food ,(New Sage Press, OR), and Killer Foods (Lyon’s Press, NY) the branches of government with regulatory authority over these and other related concerns have traditionally aligned themselves with corporate interests rather than putting the rights and interests of the consumer first.

This means that we cannot rely on the Word of big government, but on what sound science and clinical evidence we can muster when it comes to assuming personal responsibility for our health and for the related health of our companion animals and of the environment as a whole. How well our companion animals are in body and mind indeed mirrors of our own well being.

So I offer to the readers of my books, and of my nationally syndicated newspaper column, Animal Doctor with United Features, NY, basic recipes for home-prepared, whole, unprocessed, nutritionally complete and balanced, organic diets for cats and dogs, to help put their care-givers on the right track; the power of the plate, and the kitchen, are indeed great indeed from helping restore the environment, and for the health of all.

Our ever increasing numbers and consumer habits combine to signal this environmental apocalypse, the social, economic, public health, wildlife conservation, and habitat protection costs and losses being incalculable, as well as the suffering of domestic animals; especially the billions of those today incarcerated in overcrowded, polluting, and disease-spreading factory farms, and others roaming free but barely surviving starvation and dehydration on arid rangelands the world over: Plus those millions of animals used in biomedical research and product testing to find cures for disease we bring upon ourselves, and to develop new and profitable products.

But we are not helpless, since there is much we can do to make a difference. It falls upon all those of us who can still afford to keep animals as companions, and to care for them well in body and mind, to do something local that will help the global. This can be from spaying your animal for population control, and adopting one as a companion and reducing the number that will be killed in your local shelter every week, to supporting your local organic farmers and groceries and getting back to home-cooking whole, nutritious and organically certified foods for your self and for your loved ones. And if there is not an animal shelter in your community, and effective enforcement of both animal and environmental protection laws, then do what you can to make such important initiatives a reality in your community.

Other local action to help the global would be to not use any petrochemicals on your lawns and gardens that can make all your loved ones sick, and harm wildlife. Introduce local varieties of trees, shrubs, grasses and other plants that help attract wildlife. The more ‘green’ your property and neighborhood,---including office, apartment and warehouse rooftops-- the more of a carbon sink you have created, which is one antidote to global warming.

The most radical, non-violent action of revolutionary consequence can come not through our freedom of speech but through the power of the plate and the conscience of the cook: And through our informed choices in the market place, from purchasing humanely raised, free range farm animal produce if we are not vegetarians or vegans, to buying a more fuel efficient car and carefully recycling all that we possibly can so as to diminish our footprint on the planet. To live lightly is to live more simply, so that more may simply live. As consumers we have responsibilities as well as rights. Either exercise those responsibilities, or forfeit those rights.

A consumer-driven society ultimately consumes itself. A civil society is a humane one that exercises the power of the consumer in a responsible way, and that includes environmental and animal protection; the abolition of factory farms and the wholesale use of petrochemical -based pesticides and fertilizers. Many people care about wildlife protection and habitat conservation, but few realize the adverse impact of industrial agriculture on wildlife at home and abroad, and how making meat and dairy products from factory farmed animals their dietary staples means more wildlife habitat is taken to produce the feed necessary to raise billions of animals for human consumption.

Establishing more community enriching and enhancing areas of protected and restored wildlife habitat is enlightened self-interest. "Developers" appetites must be tempered by ecological science and sensibility. Cut down one tree, then replant with as many little trees that equal the photosynthetic rate of the felled one, and then harvest sustainably, keeping the enhancement of biodiversity rather than short-term profit’s the primary goal. More wildlife habitat preserves, from woodland and prairie, to wetland and water shed, would do much

to improve air and water quality, and complement organic and sustainable farming and forestry practices.

Every human enterprise and activity that affects animals and the environment and causes harm, is in the domain of veterinary concern and professional responsibility. As Socrates, who advocated social democracy, cautioned, ‘a life unexamined is a life unlived’. So we are called upon to examine how our lives cause harm to others, and how we might avoid such adverse consequences. This is the realm of ethics, of making informed choices in our lives, that calls for a broader bioethics that includes consideration of how we might harm not only our own species, but also all other species that make up the life community of this living, but increasingly dysfunctional, human infested, and poisoned planet.

Veterinary bioethics calls on every veterinarian to apply the bioethical principle of compassionate care in their treatment of animal patients and in the advice given to client-owners and care-givers. This helps override the situational ethics of treating animals kept as commodities on factory farms where optimal care of animals on an individual basis is not normally provided for reasons of cost; and where a companion animal is not given optimal care because the owner is of limited financial means or does not feel that the animal is worth the expense of costly diagnostic and treatment procedures.

Rather than compromising their professional standards and integrity in such situations, veterinarians have a moral obligation to advocate compassionate care regardless of the context and situational ethics in which their services are required. This is because the bioethic of compassionate care is a fundamental human responsibility and every animal’s basic right. Furthermore, compassionate care is vital to animals’ health, welfare, and physical and psychological well being. It is therefore as essential a component of holistic and preventive veterinary medicine as caring for the land is a vital aspect of sustainable agriculture.

Other professions and business enterprises are similarly being called to accountability and responsibility, just as all of us in our personal lives must find ways to cause less harm to the natural world and to animals domesticated and wild, in the process of satisfying our basic needs. To realize the long term benefits of applying bioethics in our decision-making and consumer-choices, to our own health, to the economy, and to the entire life community of this living earth, means living mindfully, and by the guiding principle of compassionate care.

No new laws, government oversight, or international conventions can equal the profound benefits that will come from the incorporation of the bioethics of compassionate care into every level of society from business and education to health care and care of the elderly and the poor, as well as in our everyday lives, and in all our relationships, most especially with animals who continue to serve our needs in countless ways, and contribute more to the greater good than all of us combined.

As a scientist I believe that on many, if not all evolving planetary life-systems, certain life forms that become increasingly complex and conscious, reach an inevitable crossroads in their development. Taking one path will lead to increased conflict and suffering, along with the loss of such finer sensibilities as compassion, empathy and respect for life, and for the planet’s beauty, natural biodiversity, and functional integrity.

Natural forces that help prevent such chaotic devastation, the needless loss of biodiversity, and the escalating extinction of species and cultures with the rise human populations and of their agricultural and other global industrial monocultures, now assail us with increasing virulence. People will be for ever at war against themselves, for dwindling natural resources, from oil and water to land and sea, and against Nature; those natural forces that come upon us as massive land-slides, floods, and droughts (after people have destroyed the forests); as epidemics of disease, many coming from our starving masses, from stressed and weakened livestock, and from displaced and infective wildlife; and as nutritional deficiencies, excesses and imbalances all from our nutrient deficient soils, and petrochemical contaminated food (and water), and highly processed, "fast" and "convenience", dietary food preferences. The effects of malnutrition and of our ill informed dietary choices on our emotional as well as physical health, on our immune systems and intellectual development, are at last being recognized by some holistic healers, ( for example, see The Chemistry of Joy by Henry Emmons, M.D., Simon and Schuster, NY, 2006).

As human strife and suffering intensify, we are all called upon to accountability, and must examine the bioethical foundations of our lives and civilization, contemplating the historical direction that has been taken to culminate in a collectively parasitic and pestilential presence on this increasingly dysfunctional planet Earth. We may then rediscover the wisdom- way of Nature’s mutually enhancing, life sustaining symbioses, as between flower and bee, tree and cloud, cow and meadow, farmer and soil. In the process we will recover our sense of humanity, those virtues that make the human humane. This way of nature’s wisdom, that mandates respect for natural law and order, is the altruistic path of enlightened selfishness. And it is our only viable evolutionary choice. We will then be more content in the boundless content of compassionate concern and action that is but a continent away from all our discontent.

The only hope for the future, as I see it, is in our compassionate embrace of all life, and like the Phoenix arising from the ashes of a spent civilization, the human will become more fully human---humane, ethical, empathetic and responsible for the well being of all creatures and Earth’s creation.