Portrayals of canine obesity in English-language newspapers and in leading veterinary journals, 2000-2009: Implications for animal welfare organizations and veterinarians as public educators

Abstract

In industrialized societies, more than one in three dogs as well as people currently qualify as overweight or obese. Experts in public health expect both these figures to rise. While clinical treatment remains important, so are public perceptions and social norms. This article presents a thematic analysis of English-language mass media coverage on canine obesity from 2000 through 2009, and compares these results with a thematic analysis of articles on canine obesity in leading veterinary journals during the same time period. Drawing on Giddens’ theory of structuation, articles that emphasised individual agency, environmental structure or both as contributors to canine obesity were identified. Comparisons with weight-related health problems in human populations were virtually absent from the veterinary sample. While such comparisons were almost always present in the media sample, veterinarians and other animal welfare spokespeople were quoted in ways that emphasized the agency of individual owners over structural influences. Now that weight gain and obesity have been established as a pressing animal welfare problem, these results suggest a need for research and for interventions such as media advocacy that emphasizes intersections between animal-owner agency and socio-environmental determinants, and connections between animal welfare and human health.