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Organized veterinary medicine has gone through major change in species focus over the last 100 years. From it's origins based primarily on the horse, the profession became focused on food production animals and then beginning in the early 50's to companion animals. Companion animal practice now makes up a major portion of income in today's world for veterinarians. While the other species groups are still continuing to move forward with increasing emphasis on species specialization, their overall numbers of practitioners have remained relatively stable. The dramatic increase in demand for pet care has led to this segment growing past it's agricultural base in size.

Companion animal veterinary care, while reaching very sophisticated levels of treatment, has not paid as much attention to nutrition of the dog and cat compared to the emphasis in other species.

The WSAVA understands that to reach the highest level of health care and treatment of disease for dogs and cats, nutritional assessment and recommendation must be made for every patient, every visit. Therefore, our goal as a committee is to make nutrition the 5th vital assessment of every visit (temperature, pulse, respiration, pain assessment and nutritional assessment).
In 2010, the Nutritional Guidelines Committee was formed and held its' first meeting in Geneva.

Clayton MacKay (Canada) Chair
Iveta Becvarova (USA/Eastern Europe)
Nick Cave (New Zealand)
Lisa Freeman (USA)
Patrick Nguyen (France)
Betina Rama (South America)
Greg Takashima (USA)
Ross Tiffin (United Kingdom)
Hajimi Tsujimoto (Japan)****
Peter van Beukelen (Netherlands)
S. Yanthiraj (India)****
(****Yanthiraj replaced Tsujimoto after guidelines complete)

The outcome of the committee’s work was the development of Nutritional Guidelines that have since been endorsed by a growing number of veterinary medical associations, including:

• USA - American Animal Hospital Association
• USA - American Association of Feline Pracitioners
• International Society of Feline Medicine (ISFM)
• Sweden - Swedish Society of Veterinary Medicine
• New Zealand - Companion Animal Society of the New Zealand Veterinary Association
• Iran - Iran Small Animal Veterinary Association
• Singapore - Singapore Veterinary Association
• Norway - Norwegian Small Animal Veterinary Association
• Poland - Polish Small Animal Veterinary Association
• Netherlands - Netherland Association for Companion Animal Medicine
• France - AFVAC
• China - Beijing Small Animal Veterinary Association
• China - Shanghai Small Animal Veterinary Association
• Agentina - AVEACA
• Brazil - ANCLIVEPA-Br
• Peru - AMVEPPA
  

The Guideline have also been published in:
• Journal of Small Animal Practice – WSAVA’s official Journal (linked below)
• Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery
• Australian Veterinary Practitioner

They have also been translated into multiple languages underscoring their value to the global veterinary community

2011 WSAVA Global Nutrition Guidelines

As published in the July 2011 issue of the Journal of Small Animal Practice

• Japanese Translation of Nutrition Guidelines
• French Translation of Nutrition Guidelines
• Spanish Translation of Nutrition Guidelines
• Portuguese Translation of Nutrition Guidelines
• Korean Translation of Nutrition Guidelines

The WSAVA Guidelines Development Committee met at the North American Veterinary Conference in Orlando, Fla. The group formulated a plan to build an alliance of global veterinary organizations to help healthcare teams and pet owners begin implementing the guidelines together on an international basis. These efforts will be coupled with the Veterinary Companion Animal Nutritional Consortium founded by AAHA of which WSAVA is a charter member.

Dr. MacKay and WSAVA President Jolle Kirpenstiejn attended the initial meeting of the Veterinary Companion Animal Nutritional Consortium, April 2011 in Denver. This consortium includes, AAHA, WSAVA, AVMA, CVMA, NAVTA, ACVN, ASVME and Hill`s Pet Nutrition as a non-voting participant. The Consortium`s Mission is to promote the importance of nutrition as an integral and essential component of providing optimal health care for sick and healthy pets. The consortium will seek funding from key global manufacturers of pet food to support the goal of a nutritional assessment and recommendation for every pet, every visit.

To help assimilate the WSAVA guidelines worldwide, the team’s next steps include working toward getting the guidelines published and encouraging other stakeholders to get involved. WSAVA’s
hope is that global veterinary organizations will join forces with them to encourage veterinary healthcare teams and institutions in their respective geographies to make nutrition a routine part of their recommendation procedures.
The Nutritional Guidelines committee will meet next in September 2011 just prior to the American Association of Feline Practice in Boston, USA.

The committee recognizes the work of the American Animal Hospital Association Nutritional Assessment Guideline group for their leadership and work in putting the initial guidelines in place. The WSAVA committee used these guidelines as a template for our work and then modified them to fit the more divergent feeding practices of dogs and cats around the globe.

WSAVA and the Nutritional Assessment Guidelines committee would like to recognize the educational grant from Hill`s Pet Nutrition to fund the expenses of this project to date. This grant has been made with the desire to have other major manufacturers join them in the consortium to support the overall project of better nutrition for companion animals.