The Farmer's Dog Just Funded a Vet Nutrition Residency at UGA. And It's a Bigger Deal Than It Sounds

Board-Certified Veterinary Nutritionists are critically scarce. Industry investment is one of the few ways to change that. Here's why this partnership matters for the profession.

By Vet Candy Editorial  |  June 2026  |  Nutrition & Veterinary Education

If you've ever tried to refer a complex nutrition case to a Board-Certified Veterinary Nutritionist and discovered there are none within a hundred miles of your client — this story is for you.

The Farmer's Dog announced this week that it's funding a Small Animal Clinical Nutrition Residency at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine. It's the company's second university residency sponsorship, and it comes at a moment when the scarcity of DACVIM-credentialed nutritionists is a real and recognized problem for the profession.

UGA's program will now have three residents in training simultaneously — a milestone the program has never reached before.

Why Veterinary Nutrition Specialists Are So Hard to Find

There are fewer Board-Certified Veterinary Nutritionists in the U.S. than most people in the profession realize. The pathway to board certification through ACVIM requires completion of an approved residency — a three-year, mentored, fully funded clinical training program — and those residency slots are extremely limited.

The bottleneck isn't interest. It's funding. Residency positions cost money to run, and without dedicated financial support, programs can't expand even when the demand for specialists is clear.

"Veterinary clinical nutrition residencies remain critically scarce, which makes philanthropic support like this essential to growing the next generation of Board-Certified Veterinary Nutritionists," said Dr. Jackie Parr, DACVIM (Nutrition) and ACVIM Nutrition Residency Program Director at UGA. "Our program will reach a milestone we're incredibly proud of — three residents in training at the same time, for the first time. Partnering with industry leaders like The Farmer's Dog makes that possible."

That milestone is worth sitting with. Three concurrent residents in a nutrition residency program is not the norm. It's a meaningful expansion of the pipeline.

What the Residency Actually Looks Like

The UGA program is a three-year, fully funded residency in small animal clinical nutrition. It's mentored by Dr. Jackie Parr, DACVIM (Nutrition), and Dr. Joseph Bartges, DVM, PhD, DACVIM (Small Animal Internal Medicine and Nutrition) — two of the more recognized names in veterinary nutrition.

The program combines advanced clinical education with research experience and is designed to prepare residents for board certification through ACVIM. Residents come in as graduate veterinarians and leave with the clinical depth and research portfolio to sit for boards and enter the specialist workforce.

That's the pipeline. And right now, that pipeline needs more investment than it's getting from traditional academic sources alone.

About the Partnership — and the Company Behind It

The Farmer's Dog has built its brand on the argument that minimally processed, gently cooked food produces better health outcomes in dogs. They've backed that argument with research — including a published study suggesting that dogs fed their food showed improvements in metabolic health markers — and now, increasingly, with investment in the educational infrastructure of veterinary nutrition itself.

This is their second university residency sponsorship. The first came through a similar partnership at another institution. The company has also funded research in healthy aging, hydration, urinary health, and metabolism.

"Since we started The Farmer's Dog 12 years ago, veterinarians have been central to everything we do," said Jonathan Regev, co-founder and CEO. "We believe advancing canine health starts with investing in the people and research that moves the field forward."

The company employs on-staff Board-Certified Veterinary Nutritionists, PhD nutritionists, and veterinarians. The residency investment is consistent with that posture, less a marketing play and more an institutional commitment to the field they're operating in.

The Honest Take

Industry-funded residencies in veterinary medicine are not new, and they're not without complexity. Any time a company funds a training program, questions of independence and influence are fair to raise — and worth watching as these partnerships scale.

That said, the structural problem here is real: there aren't enough residency slots to produce enough Board-Certified Veterinary Nutritionists to meet clinical demand, and academic budgets alone aren't closing that gap. Industry investment, when it funds a position rather than directing research conclusions, is one legitimate lever for addressing it.

The UGA program being led by established DACVIM faculty at an accredited institution, with ACVIM overseeing the board certification pathway, provides meaningful structural accountability. Whether that's enough will be visible in how the program operates over time.

For now: more residency slots, more specialists in the pipeline, and a nutrition program at UGA that has never before had three concurrent residents. That's a concrete positive for the profession.

What This Means for Practitioners

More veterinary nutrition specialists in training means more available for referral, more researchers producing nutrition evidence, and more DACVIM-credentialed colleagues who can consult on the complex cases that currently fall to general practitioners without specialist backup.

It also means the field is attracting industry investment serious enough to fund multi-year training programs — which, however you feel about the source, signals that veterinary nutrition is being taken seriously as a discipline with growing clinical and commercial relevance.

If you're a new graduate or a resident considering specialization, nutrition is a field where the specialist shortage is real, the career options are expanding (academic, industry, private practice, telehealth consultation), and the demand is clearly there.

Learn More

The Farmer's Dog: thefarmersdog.com

UGA College of Veterinary Medicine: vet.uga.edu

ACVIM Nutrition Specialty (board certification pathway): ACVIM — Nutrition Specialty

Find a Board-Certified Veterinary Nutritionist near you: ACVIM Specialist Finder