Gut health and pet supplements with James Bascharon of Vetnique

How is the idea of gut health affecting the pet supplement segment? I want to start off by talking about how gut health even became such a prevailing topic in the last few years.

What has changed? Why are people focusing on this now?

Oh, I think there's a lot there, Lindsay.

I think gut health has become such a huge topic, not in just the pet industry, but also just in general in the supplement industry.

So we see that trends in pet usually follow trends in human supplements and human trends in general.

The idea of gut health in people and people's understanding of their overall well-being and their health related to how they feel and how their gut health is, I think has translated into people being more focused on their pet's gut health as well.

We're learning more and more about how important our gut is to our overall well-being.

So it's not just how you feel in terms of your bowel movements and your digestive health, but how it impacts your overall immune health.

your brain gut access your skin gut access so gut health is really central to our total well-being and people's minds have shifted from okay i'll worry about my gut health when i have diarrhea or episodic issues and so they're starting to realize hey gut health is really important to my overall well-being and their understanding if they're taking a probiotic or a digestive health supplement well that's important then also for their pet and people are more in tune with their pet's health and their pet's needs than ever before

How much of it do you think is health and wellness focused and how much of it is practicality when it comes to pets? Because obviously better digestive health means an easier cleanup for dogs, less vomiting, less gastrointestinal issues overall.

Do you think it's a mix of the two or is one kind of dominating right now?

No, I think it's definitely a mix.

As humans, we're all busy and we're thinking about what are the things we need to solve for.

And so I think there's a lot of pets out there that have digestive health issues and something that the pet parent can be very attuned to.

So you're taking your dog outside, you're monitoring their stool, you're noticing that maybe they have chronic soft stool or diarrhea.

Or if you're like me, you're sitting and watching TV and you're like, okay, what's that smell coming from that side of the room? And you realize it's your dog and they've got gas issues.

So I think there definitely is part of this, which are people are trying to solve actual specific problems that they're seeing with their pet.

And, you know, pets are living a lot longer.

So as we think about the aging process, That then develops into more of all the issues that we're going to notice with an aging pet.

So osteoarthritis, deterioration of skin health, organ health, brain health, vision, hearing, but also digestive health.

So I think there's part of it is people are solving for actual problems in their pet.

However, I think what we're now seeing, though, is where I started, which is people are now really understanding the criticality of how important the gut health is to the overall health.

So we're going from gut health being this thing that I worry about when there's a problem to gut health is really central to overall health.

And we're moving from episodic type of treatment of gut health to more this is pinnacle to my pet's lifelong health journey.