The legal questions are allways tough ones because, as Bartimaeus points out,the law is a political thing. While I consider certain CAM approaches to be tantamount to malpractice, I recognize that if enough people believe in them the law will never take this position, even if it is the most rational one. The political pendulum of woo swings just like all the others, and we seem to be in what one colleague of mine called a Golden Age of Woo, in the sense that the law is veery friendly to non-evidence-based practices, and there is widespread cultural suspcion of science. I imagine this will eventually swing back the other way, and all I can do is hope to nudge it a bit.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/08/07/the-avn-is-reaping-what-they-sowed/

“The thing to remember is that unlike human medicine, the law states that only qualified vets are allowed to treat animals. This is because animals can’t choose for themselves. Therefore while the law leaves people free to go to unqualified quacks if they like, they can’t do that with their animals.

This creates a paradox. If vets were prohibited from offering SCAM treatments such as homeopathy, there would be no legal way for animal owners to access them. A responsible regulatory authority would simply say tough, we don’t allow non-evidence-based treatments to be used, and that’s that. However, the British Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons’ (RCVS) attitude is that it’s better for owners to be able to take their animal to a vet who will provide Supplementary, Complementary and Alternative Medicine (SCAM) treatment, than risk them going (illegally) to a lay quack. Consequently, the RCVS sanctions homeopathy.”

-hence the growth of veterinary practices where woo of all types is on offer……………….. is this unstoppable?

The political aspect of the board makes them reluctant to take on alternative medicine, and the definition of Veterinary medicine is this;
” “Veterinary medicine” includes veterianry surgery, obstetrics, dentistry, acupuncture, manipulation and all other branches or specialties of veterinary medicine and the prescribing, administering or dispensing of drugs and medications for veterinary purposes.”

At least in Arizona, that allows veterinarians to use almost anything that looks like it might be “medicine” (there are a few things under the definition of “malpractice” and “gross incompetence” that would make me nervous if I was thinking about using woo, but that is just me.
It seems as if someone in state government specifically wanted to leave the door open for things like acupuncture, herbal medicine, and chiropractic. The board is not all that well staffed and the board members are not paid much, so I think their main concerns are protecting public health and the economic interests of the livestock industries. I have seen two local vets loose their licenses in the lat 10 years or so-one was an alcoholic who could not count to two any more and the other seemed unable to follow sterile technique or safe anesthetic protocols. They both caused much more mayhem than they should have before they lost their licenses and frankly made a lot of the CAM practitioners around here look good.

Anyway, to make a long story short, it is going to take a lot of work and a long time to change attitudes enough for the state boards to start looking at most CAM more skeptically. Most state boards rely on the veterinary schools to define what veterinary medicine is, and as long as places like CSU can get people to pay thousands for courses in acupuncture, etc, things are not going to change much.