Sydney Bassett

During my time as a master’s student, I really developed a deep love for the biochemistry side of nutrition in my metabolism coursework. Outside of classes, I also discovered the power of a holistic approach to human medicine, using the power of good nutrition for preventative care. My desire is to use my knowledge in nutrition from my graduate research, coursework, and labs that I taught to truly educate animal owners, as individuals and larger companies, on the power of preventative care through an individualized approach on nutrition. I’ve briefly studied the importance of feeding into genetic potential in the early growing stages of life (specifically in cattle) and this goes hand-in-hand with growing an animal to reach its utmost potential. As an individual who strives to reach my greatest potential in all that I do, I believe it is both a responsibility and privilege to carry that over into the lives of both the people and the animals I encounter.

I remember hearing one of my undergraduate professors, Dr. Wayne Greene, tell our class that detailed metabolism and nutrition courses were more of a specialized field than a general focus in the veterinarian world. At the time that I was hearing this I honestly had no desire to pursue vet school. However, I am thankful for that discussion because it pushed me to dive deeper into the biochemistry of nutrition in my masters degree. As I began to wrap up my thesis project (an evaluation of the effects of oral CBD and nanotreated CBD on growth parameters in rabbits), I began to realize that my love of nutrition and treating individual animals was setting me up for vet school all along.

My love of hard work and challenges paired with this desire for nutrition, vet school, and helping others has sparked a desire to invest in the food animal industry with a focus on cattle, but also incorporating swine and poultry. More specifically, I am interested in work involving the results of multiple recent research projects that show the benefits of grass-fed/finished cattle over feed lot finished cattle. I am well aware that America is currently set up to run on a feed lot system, but I am intrigued by the nutritional benefits grass-finished beef has for consumers. I believe that my passion in this area has given me a responsibility to help bridge the gap between current beef finishing systems that run efficiently, and more nutritive practices that our society has strayed from. I believe there must be a way to maintain production levels, raise nutritive value of beef products, and incorporate a “regenerative” agriculture setting rather than focus on one that is merely “sustainable.”

This concept of raising beef in a more regenerative practice does not stop with one species. In fact, regenerative practices have been proven to include multi-species production of both animals and plants! I am beyond excited to jump into the world of food animal production in pursuit of my DVM.