Pete the Vet: Does my pet need a nutritional supplement?

The pet supplement market is a booming industry with fish oils, probiotics, supplements and the like readily available but is it all just a marketing ploy?

Some human supplements, like St. John's Wort can be poisonous for pets.

Dietary supplements have become as popular in the pet world as they are in human nutrition. If you visit a pet shop, you’ll find dozens of different food supplements on the shelf, all claiming to boost your pet’s health in one way or another. It’s estimated that around 20% of pet owners frequently give their pets supplements in the form of powders, oil, capsules, tablets, paste or chews, for a range of different reasons. But are they necessary? Or could they even be dangerous?

A nutritional supplement is defined as an ingredient to complement the diet, helping to support a particular biological function. Products available range from multivitamins to support overall good health to targetted formulas that claim to alleviate specific problems. Some of these are entirely unnecessary, being sold with marketing hype rather than based on real science. However other products do bring real benefits, falling somewhere between nutrition and pharmaceuticals (drugs). These are often also known as nutraceuticals.