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Screenshot from Instagram; annotation by Tamara Rees

A video on Instagram promoting a veterinary supplement appears, on examination, to be misleading. When viewing an advertisement featuring a veterinary endorsement, experts recommend looking for verifiable identification information as well as an ad disclosure, such as "#ad."

A curious, 2,500-word tale on Facebook first came to Dr. Anne Sinclair's attention when a long-time client emailed her a link.

The epic post is attributed to a Dr. Jessica Brown, DVM. It begins with Brown handing a $12,847 veterinary bill to a woman whose cat, Max, is supposedly at death's door.

The post goes on to say that Max is suffering from a deficiency in taurine, an amino acid. The veterinarian blames herself for not testing the cat's taurine levels, and then she describes how Max made a turnaround after being given taurine supplements made by a company called KittySupps. The post closes with an enthusiastic recommendation for the supplement and a link to its product page.

Sinclair's client was a savvy pet owner who could see the post was an advertisement, but she was still partially reeled in. Her message to Sinclair closed with a question: "Do you ever test taurine levels?"

The client wasn't the only one intrigued by the Oct. 31 Facebook post. As of Jan. 8, it had garnered 700 likes, 130 shares and 103 comments, the majority indicating trust in the narrative. Shortly after Sinclair received the inquiry from the first cat owner, a second one came into her feline specialty clinic in Maryland to ask about taurine supplements.

The Facebook post claims that taurine deficiency in Max and other cats had caused dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), a condition in which the heart muscle becomes enlarged due to weakness and cannot pump blood efficiently. It's true that cats can develop DCM from taurine deficiency, but the condition is much less common now since this link was discovered decades ago, and commercial cat food brands began supplementing with more taurine. (The taurine finding was made by Dr. Paul Pion and colleagues. Pion is cofounder of the Veterinary Information Network, an online community for the profession and parent of the VIN News Service.)

The social media post claims that certain formulations of commercial cat foods, however, impede the ability of cats to absorb the added taurine. Sinclair hadn't heard this but wondered if she'd missed something. She consulted colleagues via a VIN message board. They confirmed her suspicions: No new research suggests an issue with diet-related taurine deficiency in cats, nor are there verifiable anecdotal reports of it.

Researching the taurine deficiency claims was like pulling a string; soon, another question about the post arose. Namely, was it written by a real veterinarian? Presenting oneself as a veterinarian without actually being one may constitute a violation of the Federal Trade Commission's Endorsement Guides in the United States, according to Phyllis Marcus, vice president of BBB National Programs' National Advertising Division. While the guides do not have the force of law, said Marcus, they explain the FTC's interpretation of legal requirements when it comes to endorsements.

Given questions about the claims made in the Facebook post and its provenance, VIN News examined the advertisement with the hope of finding the veterinarian behind the endorsement and hearing her perspective.

The quest took us down a proverbial rabbit hole and illustrates the sometimes slippery nature of social media product endorsements.

Here is a rundown of how we researched the taurine ad, as well as the online endorsement of a different supplement marketed for cats and dogs.

Following links, checking directories

Brown's testimonial for KittySupps' taurine supplement was posted to Facebook by an account called Paws & Care Vet.

The "about" section shows that the page was created on Oct. 4, 2025, and is managed by "ME MORE COOL PTY. LTD." in Australia.

A search of ME MORE COOL PTY. LTD. brings up a Dun and Bradstreet business directory listing that corroborates that the company is in Australia. Its key principal is listed as Xichen Sun.

The search also shows that the entity registered with the Australian government in March 2016 and lists an office in Lindfield, New South Wales.

The Paws & Care Vet Facebook profile has little activity or personalization. There are two photos: one of a person wearing a white coat and stethoscope posing beside a dog; the other of a person in scrubs standing behind a cat. Might they be stock photos — generic images available for purchase? We uploaded both into the search field of three popular stock image websites, and found one on Adobe Stock and the other on Shutterstock. The image of the person in scrubs was AI-generated, according to its description on the stock website.

The Facebook profile page has no posts. This was curious. Where was the post ostensibly written by Brown? We clicked on Facebook's "page transparency" tab under the account's "about" section, and saw a notice that "this page is currently running ads." Under the notice is a button labeled "go to ad library." A click of the button produced all the ads posted by Paws & Care Vet — over 200 as of Jan. 8. All appeared to feature a similar story as Brown's but with different veterinarians and pictures. All included a pitch for KittySupps.

Entering KittySupps' web address into whois.com, a web-hosting company with a free domain lookup tool, shows that the URL was registered in August 2025. Sometimes, domain registrations list company representatives. In this case, however, the registrant is namecheap.com. Namecheap is one of many services through which anyone can acquire a domain name. Such services commonly allow the actual party behind the URL the option of being unlisted, which was the case for this site.

On the KittySupps website was, until recently, a blog post echoing the story in the Facebook post — said to be by a veterinarian discovering that her patient experienced heart problems due to taurine deficiency. The blog no longer appears on the website, but we saved a screenshot of it on Nov. 18.

The blog's author was identified as a veterinary cardiologist, "Dr. Emily Harrison, BVSc." VIN's director of research, Dr. Mark Rishniw, who happens to be a veterinary cardiologist, searched for a practitioner with this name and credentials. He could not find one.

The blog post, titled "Veterinary Cardiologist Exposes Hidden Crisis: Why 73% of Indoor Cats are Developing Heart Disease from 'Complete and Balanced' Food," said that Harrison worked at the "Advanced Veterinary Cardiac Care Center in Portland." We entered that practice name into several search engines but found nothing with that name in either Portland, Maine, or Portland, Oregon.

The blog also states that Harrison has "published 12 papers on feline heart disease." A search of Google Scholar and PubMed, which catalog published research papers, produced no hits.

Below the blog post is this postscript, which may explain why we couldn't find the purported veterinary cardiologist or her practice: "This is an advertisement and not an actual news article, blog or consumer protection update."

Tracking down the veterinarian named in the Facebook post presented a different challenge. The name "Jessica Brown" is common, as is the "DVM" degree. Veterinarians with that name and credential exist, but with no information on Brown's location or hospital affiliation, we could not verify her identity. At the same time, we did not find evidence tying the post to any identifiable, licensed veterinarian by that name.

The post was accompanied by an image implied to be Brown. We performed a reverse image search, uploading the photo into a search engine. The search revealed the image was of a veterinarian in Texas.

We reached that veterinarian — whose name is not Jessica Brown — and she said she has had no contact with KittySupps and did not give consent for her photo to be used to market the supplement. The image matches one posted on her clinic's social media and was presumably downloaded from there.

We asked KittySupps over email whether the veterinarians named in its advertisements were real and whether consent had been obtained for the images used. A company representative initially agreed to arrange a telephone interview, but in a follow-up said it wouldn't be possible. The representative commented that the Facebook post we looked at came from a "third-party page," so they can't "verify their authenticity or the individuals involved from this channel." They did not provide further responses.

Social media marketing tricks of the trade

In 2025, multiple major news outlets reported on a trend on social media: falsely claiming medical expertise to sell a human health supplement or product.

Dr. Courtney Deer, an emergency veterinarian who creates informational content for pet owners, recently explored the topic in a post on Substack, a publishing platform used for newsletters. She found several Instagram and TikTok videos that implied a veterinary endorsement but had no identifiable practitioner behind them.

Intrigued, VIN News went on Instagram to look for similar videos. They weren't hard to find. Half a dozen came to light within a few minutes of searching for the commonly advertised products Deer identified in her Substack. One starts with a man in blue scrubs narrating to the camera. "After 31 years in vet clinics, I can tell you it's never the fancy diets that work," he says.

Without giving his name or where he works, the man ends the 90-second video by recommending a collagen supplement from a company called Taily. "I only recommend Taily collagen," he cautions. "You'll find the verified one on Amazon. Click the link in my bio to get the exact one I use."

The man never explicitly says he works in veterinary medicine, but his scrubs and claim of decades spent in veterinary clinics imply expertise. A direct message we sent to the account featuring his video, called wholesome.woofs, received no response.

Deer analyzed a similar video narrated by seemingly the same man. When Deer entered the man's description ("older with glasses") into an artificial intelligence video generator, his likeness came up immediately. Deer deduced that he was not a real human, much less a real veterinarian. Avatars produced by AI are becoming more common on social media sites.

The figure in the video Deer examined also promoted Taily collagen, and both videos pointed would-be purchasers to Amazon.com. That kind of referral is common on social media thanks to affiliate marketing, a practice by which social media "creators" can earn sales commissions from e-commerce platforms for purchases made via the link they give.

Linking to a product page on Amazon indicates that the creator may be part of the Amazon Associates program, Amazon's version of affiliate marketing. One of the rules of the program is that associates clearly disclose that they are an affiliate, which neither of the videos do. Misrepresenting oneself as a veterinarian would not be allowed under Amazon's policy.

"This would violate our operating agreement as misinformation [and] is in violation of FTC guidelines," an Amazon spokesperson said by email, referring to the Federal Trade Commission. "Creators found to be in violation of the agreement are removed from the program."

However, when asked if a removed associate could reapply and be readmitted to the program, the spokesperson didn't rule it out.

"Ability to reapply is dependent on details of the account closure," they said.

The spokesperson confirmed that any product sold on Amazon is by default eligible for affiliate marketing. Additionally, the spokesperson said, companies that sell their products on Amazon are not consulted about ads created by affiliate marketers of their product.

Since the video is not labeled as a paid advertisement, we cannot definitively say that the creator of the Taily collagen video is in the Amazon Associates program. However, Taily founder and chief executive officer Tommy Rodriguez said by email that creators marketing his product inappropriately is a problem, and his company has to "deal with this issue constantly."

Rodriguez said that while his team "internally monitors and flags improper content," more robust enforcement from social media platforms would make a meaningful difference.

"A major issue we're aware of is creators using inflammatory or misleading claims, including falsely presenting themselves as veterinarians to gain credibility," said Rodriguez. "This not only misleads pet owners but also conflicts with our standards, and we actively fight to eliminate these impostors whenever they appear."