Is VCNZ Running A Protection Racket to (a) Cover for Licensed Staff It's Mandated to Hold Accountable, or (b) Cover for A Major Veterinary 'Hospital' Operating Its ICU with NO Qualified Veterinarians on its Evening Shifts and Night Shifts, or (c) BOTH?

One Month Later . . . VCNZ Won't Answer and Nor Will Massey . . . So What Does that Indicate?

July 6, 2026 UPDATE: 

The Veterinary Council of New Zealand (VCNZ) has finally responded to my June 8 email, in which the VCNZ's attempted limitation of disclosure of clinicians' identities to just two day staff (one whose identity I had determined of my own accord) was rejected. My June 8 email (that you can read below) had required that the VCNZ keep the promises its CEO Iain McLachlan made dating back as far as February and also the subsequent assurances repeated (but never honored) by the CEO's Deputy, Liam Shields.

Shields has taken one month to issue a response which, notwithstanding the earlier, multiple promises and assurances, now repeats his refusal to disclose any other clinicians' identities . . . despite the fact that Harry was admitted the previous night and that Harry's initial catastrophic overdosing and IV disconnection-for-student-training was either under the instruction of a licensed veterinarian on that overnight shift, in which case that name must be disclosed so that a complaint can be laid against that clinician with the VCNZ . . . or, alternatively, Shields's now-repeated refusal is an admission that the Massey University Companion Animal Hospital's Intensive Care Unit operates its overnight shift without the attendance of a licensed veterinarian.

In direct contravention of the VCNZ's legal obligations and all its leadership team's previous commitments and assurances to obtain the names of all licensed clinicians, Shields has now directed me back to Massey to "obtain these under a Privacy Act or an Official Information Act request" . . . (a) actions he is fully aware that I have already taken, and (b) despite being in direct receipt of Massey's own emails to me refusing to provide this information, with Massey's Legal & Governance operative stating clearly (notwithstanding Massey's own obligations) that Massey would provide it only to the VCNZ.

Both parties insist that the only way forward is to lay a complaint with the VCNZ, while:

(a)  Actively preventing me from doing so since the clinicians' names must be known as complaints are accepted only against individual practitioners,

(b)  Massey's Dean Jon Huxley's and VCNZ CEO Iain McLachlan's documented collusion and associated email exchange has long since been published (and is the subject of a Law Society of New Zealand investigation),

(c)  The two parties' mutual, conjoint interests are protected by a conflicted structure at multiple points, and

(d) Having an almost unbelievable 1.5% prosecution rate of all complaints brought before them (with a published acknowledgement by Massey's Dean of Veterinary Education, Jenny Weston, who sits on the very committee that will rule on such complaints, that a significant proportion of would-be complaints are never submitted to the VCNZ for this very reason . . . rendering the confessed 1.5% prosecution rate considerably inflated over even the appalling reality).

But now to the most immediately pressing issue. Here is the critical question I had put to Shields in my June 8 email . . . and that he has resolutely refused to answer in today's (July 6) "response" . . . I asked Liam Shields:

Who was the registered veterinarian responsible for Harry's “care” between midnight and 9am?

If a registered veterinarian WAS on duty and overseeing the ICU during those hours – who are they, and why are their names being withheld from me by both Massey and now by you?

If a registered veterinarian was NOT on duty – are you confirming that Massey University's premier veterinary teaching hospital ICU operates throughout the entire night without a registered veterinarian present?

And Liam Shields has refused to answer, so that should perhaps tell pet owners and referring vet clinics all they need to know.

The VCNZ's continued refusal to name, or to seek the name of, any overnight licensed veterinarian – combined with Massey's parallel refusal – now provides further weight to the distinct and serious possibility that Massey University's Companion Animal Hospital ICU operates its overnight shift without a licensed veterinarian in attendance, whether sporadically, regularly, or as a matter of standard institutional practice.

If that's the case, the catastrophic and repeated pharmaceutical overdosing of Harry Kelly between 1am and 9am on December 1, 2025 – contraindicated for his documented renal compromise, and administered in some cases just 26 minutes apart – was carried out by unregistered, unsupervised staff operating in a complete regulatory and accountability vacuum.

The animal welfare implications of this, if confirmed, extend well beyond Harry's individual case to every animal currently admitted to that ICU overnight.

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UPDATE: Within minutes of hitting Send on the below email to the VCNZ at 8.47pm on June 8, this site's live "real-time" viewer analytics recorded immediate visitor traffic from Melbourne, Auckland and Palmerston North - all landing at the same time. Sharp-minded readers will understand the interconnected significance of those three reader locations springing up simultaneously. Hint: Read my email to VCNZ Deputy Registrar Liam Shields, and note who I have listed as being on the cc'd recipients list . . . and who I haven't.

The Google Analytics real time screenshot and a more explanatory summary here.

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The scandal-proportions collusion between the Veterinary Council of New Zealand (VCNZ) and Massey University's Veterinary Teaching Hospital aka Companion Animal Hospital continues . . . and it's either exactly as expected OR a whole lot worse than expected OR both.

Let the reader decide.

Here is my response to an email received today from the Veterinary Council's Deputy Registrar Liam Shields (in the conspicuous and conspicuously continuing absence of Chief Executive Iain McLachlan, who - it might be reasonably assumed - is currently hidden away from public view licking his self-inflicted Law Society investigation wounds resulting from having intentionally set up the board for this unintentional and ongoing duel).

Immediately below is my response to Shields's email which arrived this afternoon after, this time, only a tiny three-week foot-dragging delay. His email is below mine (since mine is far more interesting and contains information of genuine value).

_______________________________________________________

Dear Mr Shields

Is VCNZ Running A Protection Racket to (a) Cover for Licensed Staff It's Mandated to Hold Accountable, or (b) Cover for A Major Veterinary 'Hospital' Operating Its ICU with NO Qualified Veterinarians on its Evening Shifts and Night Shifts, or (c) BOTH?

Thank you for your email of today's date.

I note that your response provides two names:

Dr Steffi Maja Jalava (the day shift veterinarian who oversaw the continuation of the night shift’s catastrophic, unauthorised and intentional convenience over-sedation of my dog, who would have overseen his covert and unauthorised conversion as a university training resource, and who aggressively coerced me into consenting to his fraudulent “euthanasia” on the basis of a completely false “neurological” diagnosis) – and whose identity I had already independently established and published months ago – and now Dr Anita Shea, who conducted a neurological examination on a catastrophically sedated dog with a resultantly pharmacologically-suppressed central nervous system) at 11.22am, three hours after his IV fluids had been disconnected for covert student activities and filming), and who is the subject of this specific article  from among the 50+ items of coverage  that I have thus far produced, and who also features in the 342-page forensically-detailed report I have provided to the Ministry of Primary Industries’ Animal Welfare Complex Cases investigators.

Dr Anita Shea’s role in the demand for my perfectly viable, falsely diagnosed, but massively Gabapentin-oversedated little dog to be "euthanased" will, of course, form one of the far greater number of formal complaints that must be laid . . . and that must be enabled (with full and proper disclosure of ALL involved licensed practitioners) to be laid.

A commentated repository of the entire, constantly updated coverage can be found here, with a more graphical display of article links  here.

Firstly, let us address the fact that your response is precisely the entirely predictable, disingenuously selective, incomplete response I warned you – in writing, and publicly – that I knew you would be scheming with Massey to produce. I refer you to my published correspondence: Veterinary Council of NZ to Disclose Names: Don’t Get Excited. It’s Not What It Sounds Like. Jordan Kelly • 19 May 2026

That prediction has now played out in full.             

There is now, however, a far more systemic and all-encompassing – nothing less of scandalous, in fact – issue to be urgently addressed. One that involves your apparent inadvertent confession on Massey’s behalf that it operates a major international veterinary teaching establishment’s Intensive Care Unit without any registered, qualified veterinarians physically present on duty during its critical, emergencies-receiving, evening and overnight shifts.

Because this is a matter of immediate consumer concern, I am cc’ing this email to Consumer New Zealand, to the three international accrediting bodies i.e. the Australasian Veterinary Boards Council (AVBC), the American Veterinary Medical Council (AVMA), and the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (UK). Further, given that this is also a matter of considerable and urgent public interest, I am including Radio New Zealand's John Campbell in the recipients. And further, given the fact that Massey uses this facility in the provision of its academic education to both domestic and international veterinary students, I am including, in the recipients, Mr John Gill (CEO of Times Higher Education) and Mr Franz Wild (CEO and Editor-in-Chief of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ).

It will, additionally, be forwarded to the Senior Investigation Team conducting the Ministry of Primary Industries’ Animal Welfare Complex Cases Unit’s investigation into the University’s veterinary facility.

Whether or not this can be confirmed to be the case, there are nonetheless and even so, still core omissions from your disclosure . . . the disclosure, in fact, that the senior in-house legal counsel of Massey’s premier accrediting body, the RCVS, has plainly confirmed to me, should absolutely include ALL the names of any clinician who had ANY in involvement in ANY form, in the “treatment”, “care” or decisions made about my dog.

To whatever degree these can or will be answered, will make clear whether we are dealing here with a catastrophic operational failure in the rostering, supervision and staffing of Massey’s ICU, and/or whether we are dealing with a systemic dual-party cover-up. Or both.

Your Deliberate Omissions

Your response makes no reference whatsoever to:

• Dr Stephanie Rigg

Rigg’s name appears directly on Harry's pre-typed “euthanasia” “consent” form (noting that this was signed on the basis of an entirely and intentionally false diagnosis and non-disclosure of the real nature of Harry’s condition i.e. massive undisclosed, over-sedation), and who presented herself to me as a qualified veterinarian at the time of Harry's admission. She is either a registered veterinarian – in which case her name belongs on your list – or she is not. If she is not, I require you to confirm that in writing, because it is a component of the above bigger-picture institutional concern.

• The licensed supervising veterinarian(s) responsible for the overnight ICU shift

During which Harry was catastrophically and repeatedly overdosed with unnecessary, unauthorised and contraindicated sedatives, beginning at 1am and hitting him in quick succession with another massive overdose – just 26 minutes later  – at 1.26am on December 1, 2025. Assumedly this, and the Prevomax as the other pharmaceutical in the sedation cocktail, was not taking effect fast enough to ensure the cessation of his distressed crying (witnessed directly by me as being completely ignored by socialising ICU staff, while this, my disoriented blind dog stood up on his hind legs with his forelegs fully and dangerously outstretched through the cage door wire grid, seeking (but not receiving) human orientation and comfort.

• All other licensed veterinary practitioners

Who had any involvement in Harry's admission, “treatment”, handling, “diagnosis”, decisions regarding, and the authorisation and supervision of student observational activities and cell phone filming / video’ing of Harry during his state of severe pharmacological collapse, the refusal of emergency overdose-reversal treatment, and the noncommunication (in fact, the deliberate obscuration) of any of the preceding to me, or the recommendation of immediate “euthanasia”.

Also, the veterinarian or veterinarians who recorded, or who should have recorded but did not record, Harry’s vitals during December 1, such being completely missing from Massey’s supplied IDEXX screen shots – albeit, his November 30 vitals/IDEXX readings depicted a perfectly viable, recovering patient requiring only the rehydration protocol for which he had been admitted (and entrusted).

• The registered veterinarian responsible for posthumous record manipulation

Specifically, the licensed practitioner who authorised, executed, or oversaw the manual data scrubs on December 3, the manual inflation of Billing Record 636969 hours after Harry's death, the forensic wiping of the Patient Change Log timestamps and other records falsifications. These actions are currently the subject of Police Report OR-2484821N under Sections 258 and 260 of the Crimes Act 1961 and they have been extensively documented, complete with screen shots, in the associated-headlined article within my coverage compilation.

Massey’s and VCNZ’s Mutual Active Evasion & Disablement of Proper Complaints Submission

To be noted, your statement that "any other staff members and students who were involved with Harry's care were following the treatment plan provided by the primary veterinarian" is not an answer, Mr Shields. It is the evasion I predicted in several of my earlier articles.

Harry Kelly was admitted to Massey's Companion Animal Hospital ICU at approximately 9pm on Sunday November 30, 2025. The first documented contraindicated sedation overdose occurred at 1am – thus, around four hours into his admission.

Dr Jalava is the day shift clinician. Her shift (she had told me herself) commences at 9am.

Dr Stephanie Rigg, the intaking intern from the previous night, stated she was clocking off at midnight.

So I put this directly to you, Mr Shields – and I put it publicly, because the answer carries consequences far beyond my dog’s individual case, which is in its own right beyond comprehension for any supposedly professional, supervised, and ethical veterinary establishment of any size or standing – anywhere.

Who was the registered veterinarian responsible for Harry's “care” between midnight and 9am?

If a registered veterinarian WAS on duty and overseeing the ICU during those hours – who are they, and why are their names being withheld from me by both Massey and now by you?

If a registered veterinarian was NOT on duty – are you confirming that Massey University's premier veterinary teaching hospital ICU operates throughout the entire night without a registered veterinarian present?

That critical pharmaceutical and other medical and emergency care and treatment decisions – including the administration of contraindicated sedatives (per Massey’s own records) to a renally compromised patient (also as per Massey’s own records) – are being made and executed by unregistered, unsupervised students and interns, operating in a complete regulatory vacuum? Including their dosages at catastrophic levels, combined with other drugs, without the owner’s knowledge or consent, and repeatedly, in some cases (with full day’s doses for a substantially larger and renally NON-compromised dog), just 26 minutes apart?

It is absolutely critical that these two fundamental questions be answered, in the interests of the entire veterinary sector and its pet-owning clientele – as well as any intending student of Massey’s academic veterinary degree program.

Clearly, whichever answer is the case, either one of them is a scandal in the first degree.

For further clarity, Mr Shields: If a private fee-paying patient’s "treatment plan" covers everything, then you must explain how a day-shift clinician is legally or clinically responsible for overdosing that commenced at 1am while she was, by any reasonable assumption, asleep at home. If she is not responsible for those overnight interventions – and she clearly cannot be (although she certainly was responsible for the catastrophic continuance of them and the fraudulent “euthanasia” push, in which she was regrettably successful).

The failure to provide any name from the night shift roster of December 1, 2025 then means Massey is operating an unregulated, unsupervised Intensive Care Unit (ICU) environment where private clients' pets are managed as autonomous instructional assets by unqualified staff operating in a complete managerial, structural, and accountability vacuum.

Further, if the VCNZ's regulatory remit covers registered veterinarians only, and if the VCNZ cannot investigate students, unqualified technicians, or unregistered staff  (although you certainly have the power to compel Massey to disclose their identities to me as the owner of the dog they “treated” (and terminated under fully false pretences), then every single clinical action, prescription, pharmaceutical administration, and entry in Harry's medical records must be legally tied back to a specific registered veterinarian who authorised it.

Massey cannot have it both ways. And neither can the Veterinary Council. They and you cannot claim that the actions carried out during the overnight period were the decisions of unregistered staff in order to evade VCNZ scrutiny – while simultaneously claiming those actions constituted legally authorised clinical procedures for which a private, fee-paying client was charged $1236.84  (while, it should be noted, Massey profited additionally from Harry’s covert conversion as a teaching video subject, with its Chief of Staff, Jodie Banner, telling me that I am “not entitled” to be sent the videos they utilised my own dog for the unauthorised production thereof).

For the first approximately two-thirds of Harry's fifteen hours in Massey's ICU and the administration of these sedatives to him – none of which was communicated to, or authorised by, me as his owner – not one registered veterinarian has been identified as responsible for any of those medications administered to him, nor any treatment decisions made about him, nor any oversight of his "care".

I ask you directly, Mr Shields: do Massey's referring veterinary clinics know this? Do the pet owners of the Manawatū region, and does the broader New Zealand pet-owning public, know this?

The CAC Trap I Will Not Be Entering

Your suggestion that I simply complete separate Notification Forms to be referred to a Complaints Assessment Committee who will then, assumedly, secretively identify and investigate, or not identify and not investigate, all those individuals you have left me to identify for myself, is a transparent attempt to funnel this matter into a closed-door system designed for erasure.

I am well aware of the VCNZ's own published data – previously co-authored by your own VCNZ Council member, Professor Jenny Weston – revealing that over a 24-year period, 67.2% of complaints were dismissed outright or not investigated at all, with a microscopic 1.5% ever upheld, and then only on narrow technical competency grounds, with no meaningful accountability for ethical failures whatsoever.

I will not allow a systemic failure of professional ethics, animal welfare, and potential criminal document alteration to be buried in a framework optimised for institutional protectionism.

On this note, I would like to ensure that you are hereby made aware of the Official Information Act request that I have had to send to Massey, in order to finally determine how it came to be that – and who authorised – my beloved, treasured private fee-paying pet (papillon, Harry Kelly) to be utilised – most especially in the catastrophically over-sedated state of collapse  into which he had been pharmacologically engineered by your staff (starting in the early hours of your apparently non-veterinarian/non-supervised night shift and continuing into the day shift) to be used for Massey’s student training and filming activities. (Further to be answered is that, if he really were suffering some mysteriously sudden neurological decline, such would clearly not be a clinically responsible or ethical time for his utilisation for invasive and totally irrelevant student training procedures to be conducted upon him (dental exams, stomach palpitations, leg extensions, and the rest of the very extensive list documented in Massey’s own “Clinical Summary”) and “educational” video productions.

I also hold grave concerns about undocumented pharmaceutical and dosage administrations. I am currently investigating this and my further article on it should be published within the week.

Structural Conflicts of Interest

I note again that Professor Jenny Weston – the co-author of the very research that documents your Council's 1.5% uphold rate – sits on the VCNZ Council that is legally required to review all CAC decisions, while simultaneously serving as Academic Program Director at Massey University. I further note that Seton Butler holds a dual role as Massey Adjunct Lecturer and professional advisor to the VCNZ.

These are not incidental overlaps.  They are the architecture of the collusive, closed-loop arrangement I have been documenting publicly for months. The VCNZ's refusal to provide the complete list of veterinary personnel (at the very minimum, including ALL associated licensed veterinarians) – while its own Council members and advisors span both institutions – creates an undeniable perception of a conflicted network protecting its own.

The VCNZ's Own Authority

You possess the absolute statutory authority to demand the identity of every individual involved in a patient's full case timeline – not merely those you intend to (or intend to pretend to) discipline. You and the rest of the VCNZ executive are fully aware that Massey has systematically redacted all names, and withheld all shift rosters, audit logs, and personnel lists specifically to block me from filing individual complaints – and that I have sought through every available statutory tool to extract them and still they have been fully withheld.

By your having simply accepted Massey's two-name summary (one of which, as you know, I have long since identified for myself) without demanding the complete (including night-shift) roster, the VCNZ is not merely failing in its duty – it is actively allowing a public institution to deploy administrative redactions as a shield against regulatory accountability.

And your acceptance of Massey's two-name summary – without demanding the complete set of names of all practitioners who signed off on pharmaceutical administrations, the identity of every registered veterinarian who authorised, supervised, or oversaw the student observational activities and cell phone filming of Harry during his state of induced pharmacological collapse on the morning of December 1, or the identity of the individual responsible for the December 3 data scrub and other records falsifications that are the subject of Police Report OR-2484821N and posthumous billing manipulation – constitutes active participation in the suppression of information you have the statutory power to compel.

A Direct Question for Your Chief Executive

I note that your Chief Executive Officer, Mr Iain McLachlan, has been copied on months of correspondence regarding this matter and has chosen to remain entirely absent from this process – delegating all engagement to his Deputy Registrar while a matter of this gravity sits unaddressed. Or, more accurately stated, consistently evaded.

I ask publicly: Is a systemic breakdown of this magnitude at New Zealand's only veterinary teaching hospital  – involving potential criminal record falsification, the overnight pharmaceutical overdosing of a private patient without registered veterinary oversight, the covert conversion of a private fee-paying client’s pet to university teaching resource status, and the coerced killing of a fully viable animal under false pretences to dispose of the evidence of foul play – beneath the attention of the Chief Executive of the Veterinary Council of New Zealand? Or is his silence a deliberate act of institutional protectionism?

The public, and the pet-owning clients of Massey's referring veterinary clinics, deserve an answer to that question also.

My Requirement

I require the complete, unredacted list of every licensed veterinarian who had any involvement whatsoever with Harry Kelly during his admission on November 30 and December 1, 2025 – including but not limited to any registered practitioner who authorised, administered, or oversaw any pharmaceutical intervention, clinical decision, handling or procedure, student activity or filming, or real-time or posthumous record manipulation.

I expect this without further delay – and I will continue to document your response, your non-response, your partial response . . . or any response akin to those you have already provided i.e. responses given when no response is actually being given.

This correspondence is being published in full at The Customer & The Constituent NZ  and in the Investigations, Media and Case Study sections  of the International Institute for Improvement in Veterinary Ethics (IIIVE) and, as already stated, will be forwarded to the Ministry of Primary Industries' Animal Welfare Complex Cases Unit.

Yours sincerely

Jordan Kelly
Editor-in-Chief – The Customer & The Constituent NZ

Executive Director – International Institute for Improvement in Veterinary Ethics (IIIVE)

________________

From: Liam Shields <liam@vetcouncil.org.nz> 
Sent: Monday, 8 June 2026 3:02 pm
To: editor@consumeraffairswriter.com
Subject: 2026_06_08 Your Privacy Act Response of March 19, 2026 - Jordan Kelly

Kia ora Ms Kelly, 

We wrote to Massey University Veterinary Teaching Hospital (“MUVTH”) and asked for the names of the veterinarians who had primary care responsibility for the treatment and care of Harry Kelly. MUVTH responded - 

The main veterinarian who had primary care responsibility for Harry Kelly was Dr Steffi Jalava. She is a Senior Practicing Veterinarian in the Veterinary Teaching Hospital, a diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care and is one of the 3 criticalists who look after patients in our ICU. Her role is primarily clinical associated with clinical teaching of the BVSc5 student cohort.

Dr Jalava consulted with Dr Anita Shea, a diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Neurology, who oversaw Harry Kelly’s neurological assessment and treatment. Dr Shea is a Senior Lecturer in Veterinary Education who is frequently consulted on neurological patients in the Companion Animal Hospital.

Any other staff members and students who were involved with Harry’s care were following the treatment plan provided by the primary veterinarian.

Below is information about how to make a complaint about an individual veterinarian. Please let me know if you have any questions about how the process works. 

A formal compliant must be made in writing. The easiest way to do this is by completing our  Notification Form. A separate form is needed for each veterinarian that you would like to complain about. If you have supporting documents, or would prefer to make submissions by letter, you’re welcome to do so. Please make sure that any letter addresses the questions that are listed in our notification form. We ask for this information so that the scope of the complaint is clear from the outset, including how the concerns relate specifically to the veterinarian that has been named. 

Your complaint/s will be referred to a Complaints Assessment Committee (“CAC”). A CAC is an investigative body that gathers information and makes decisions about what should happen with a complaint - often carrying out an investigation before reaching a decision. The standard applied by the CAC is what would reasonably be expected of a competent veterinarian practising in similar circumstances (taking into account their level of training and resources). The outcomes available are - no further action; educative advice; referral for a competence or health assessment; and in the most serious of cases, the laying of a disciplinary charge. 

You raised a comment in your earlier email about the scope and nature of any potential investigation. I thought it would be helpful to note that if, during an investigation, a CAC identifies concerns about a veterinarian who was not named in the original complaint, it can refer the matter to us to open a separate complaint. 

The Vet Council promotes high standards through proportionate, right touch regulation. Where appropriate, we use education and voluntary or assisted compliance to ensure that veterinarians are meeting professional standards (and the standard expected by the wider profession). You can read more about our complaint process here. 

Please see attached a brochure on the CAC. 

Regards, 

Liam Shields

Deputy Registrar 

Te Kaunihera Rata Kararehe o Aotearoa | Veterinary Council of New Zealand

Level 6, Midland Chambers, 45 Johnston Street, Wellington 6011