For the Maryland Sunset review of the vet board, many many many consumers in Maryland and beyond submitted comments attesting tha the board remains, as noted in the prior Sunset Review, biased against consumers of veterinary medicine, biased against complainants, and biased against enforcement. They still see their role as protecting veterinarians from accusations rather than objectively investigating them and enforcing standard of care, and as a result, shoddy practice continues and pets continue to be maimed and to die.
Unfortunately, despite all those comments, the panel convened to review the veterinary board returned a glowing review, and as a result of our efforts they exempted the veterinary board from future automatic reviews. Now, a review will only be undertaken if the legislature determines it is needed. And, given the fact that the state clearly ignored evidence of malfeasance of the board, lack of enforcement, and hostility to consumer complainants, that will never happen.
In other words, the industry lobbyists and the state officials who see their role to protect the industry rather than the citizens of the state, took the opportunity created by our consumer action and even further rolled back protections for our pets, making the situation even worse.
There is no worse feeling as a consumer advocate than having your efforts to lobby for improvements in regulatory oversight backfire, and see them leveraged to even further reduce regulatory oversight. That is what happened to us in Maryland.
I want to publicly thank Jeff Waldstreicher for his assistance in getting this review done. It is not his fault that the entire process was perverted and used to further lower the bar and reduce oversight. But that is exactly the outcome we got.
In another brief post, I will provide some hopeful news of a new resource available for victims and advocates.
