A safe and available blood supply is essential in veterinary medicine. In May 2026, Mars Veterinary Health and the American Red Cross expanded joint human-and-pet blood drives through the BluePearl hospital network, while Mars Veterinary Health described a continuing critical shortage of veterinary blood products.1 This is an important response to an immediate clinical need. It also exposes a deeper systems question.
The shortage is measurable, not theoretical.
BluePearl Pet Hospital, the specialty and emergency arm of Mars Veterinary Health, provides unusually concrete system-level numbers. In 2025, BluePearl reported 7,000 blood transfusions, with almost 50% of the blood products used sourced from its own community-based BluePearl Pet Blood Bank.9 By May 2026, Mars Veterinary Health reported that the BluePearl Pet Blood Bank operated in 22 locations across the United States.1 A 2026 BluePearl publication also described its hospitals as performing about 8,000 transfusions each year and noted that some commercial veterinary blood products can remain on back order for as long as six months.10
Reported by BluePearl across its specialty and emergency hospital system.9
Almost half of the blood products used in 2025 came from BluePearl's own pet blood bank.9
BluePearl's national blood bank director reported that some products may take up to six months when back ordered.10
These are not national incidence estimates. They are operating data from one large specialty and emergency network. But that is precisely why they matter. BluePearl performs thousands of transfusions every year, has built a 22-location donor-blood infrastructure, produces a substantial share of its own blood products, and still publicly describes a critical shortage and prolonged commercial back orders. The constraint is therefore not simply awareness of donation. It is structural availability.
Blood donation saves the recipient. What does it require from the donor?
Human blood donation is voluntary and based on informed consent. Veterinary donors cannot make that decision themselves. Their participation depends on owners, veterinary teams, donor selection, handling and the ability to perform collection with an acceptable welfare and safety profile.
This is particularly relevant in feline transfusion medicine. The 2021 ISFM Consensus Guidelines state that blood collection can be performed in conscious cats with a skilled team, but movement and signs of anxiety are more frequent in conscious donors and sedation or general anaesthesia is commonly used. The guidelines conclude that donors should, in most cases, be sedated appropriately for blood collection.2
Retrospective study across 7,812 individual cats between 2019 and 2023.3
27,925 of 29,201 events were recorded in the sedated group in the published dataset.3
Overall adverse reactions were uncommon at 0.29%, but conscious donation was the significant identified risk factor.3
These data should not be misread. They do not show that feline blood donation is generally unsafe. The study found a low overall adverse-reaction rate, and appropriate sedation was associated with lower risk. But they do show that obtaining blood from a healthy cat is not a biologically neutral event. It can require chemical restraint, venepuncture, monitoring and recovery in an animal that was healthy before the procedure.
The question becomes much larger across species.
Donor welfare is only one part of the problem. Veterinary medicine includes species for which compatible donor blood may be difficult to identify, difficult to collect, geographically unavailable or supported by very limited transfusion evidence. The physiology is not identical across species, and neither are their blood-group systems. That is precisely why a single dog-and-cat blood-bank model cannot be assumed to solve every veterinary emergency.
What if the patient is a horse in the field?
A 2022 review describes equine transfusion as particularly challenging in field settings. More than 400,000 possible equine red-cell phenotypes are reported, no universal equine donor exists, and donor-recipient incompatibility is expected to be common enough that cross-matching is recommended.
Open the equine transfusion review ↗What if standardized compatibility systems barely exist?
Recent camel research describes transfusion practice as hindered by poorly understood blood-group systems, naturally occurring agglutinins and the absence of standardized cross-matching protocols. The challenge is not simply finding blood. It is knowing how safely to match it.
Open the camel compatibility study ↗What if the donor is another bird?
Avian transfusion literature describes autologous, homologous and heterologous whole-blood transfusion and also discusses hemoglobin-based oxygen-carrying solutions as part of the therapeutic options for anemic birds. This is already a field where clinicians have had to think beyond a conventional same-species blood-bank model.
Open Avian transfusion medicine ↗Where does the compatible donor come from?
Published experience in great apes notes that transfusion in exotic species is constrained by incomplete knowledge of species-specific blood groups, limited availability of suitable donors and potential adverse effects. For rare or endangered species, the practical donor pool can be extremely small.
Open the great-ape transfusion review ↗What if transfusion is considered but evidence is too limited?
In a 2024 bottlenose dolphin case of severe immune-mediated hemolytic anemia, transfusion was discussed but not attempted because of the lack of studies in cetaceans. That is a very different problem from simply asking for more donors.
Open the bottlenose dolphin case report ↗The blood-bank problem changes with the species.
For companion animals, the challenge may be donor recruitment and compatibility. For a horse it may be field logistics and complex phenotypes. For a camel it may be incomplete compatibility knowledge. For wildlife, birds or cetaceans it may be the absence of a practical donor system at all.
Explore Vet Real-World Evidence & Cases →The problem is larger than donation alone.
Emergency transfusion depends on more than having a willing donor. The system must provide the right product for the right species and recipient, at the right location and at the right time. Blood typing, cross-matching, infectious-disease screening, collection, processing, storage and transport all protect the patient, but they also create unavoidable operational constraints.
For a critically ill animal, the physiological problem may develop faster than the blood-supply chain can respond. The immediate objective in that interval is not necessarily to reproduce every function of blood. It is to preserve the failing life-support function, including oxygen delivery, until definitive treatment becomes available.
A different architecture: donor blood plus an oxygen-delivery reserve.
We believe the useful translational question is not whether donor blood should be replaced. Donor blood performs multiple functions and will remain essential. The question is whether veterinary emergency medicine could add another layer: a donor-independent, shelf-stable oxygen-delivery therapeutic that can be available before compatible donor blood is sourced, or where a conventional blood supply is exceptionally difficult to establish.
This concept becomes particularly important outside the dog-and-cat blood-bank environment. A future oxygen therapeutic would not need to reproduce plasma, platelets or every biological function of whole blood to have potential value as a bridge. It would need to demonstrate that it can safely support the specific oxygen-delivery deficit for a defined species and clinical context.
The proposed research architecture
Current architecture: emergency need → compatible donor blood must be identified and available → collection / blood bank / transport → transfusion.
Proposed research architecture: emergency need → immediate oxygen-delivery support when appropriate → compatible donor blood or definitive therapy when required.
Evidence boundary
This concept is not an argument against veterinary blood donation. Donation saves lives, and properly managed donor programs remain essential.
It is also not evidence that BHOC is currently safe or effective across species. A future product cannot inherit efficacy or approval from Oxyglobin, from another HBOC, or from another species. Each target species or clinically justified species group requires its own safety, dosing, pharmacology and efficacy evidence.
“Cross-species” here describes a development question and an emergency-care architecture, not a claim of universal clinical interchangeability.
Primary and authoritative sources
- Mars Veterinary Health. Mars Veterinary Health and the American Red Cross Expand Partnership to Combat Need for Human and Pet Blood Donations. GlobeNewswire. 20 May 2026. Source.
- Taylor S, Spada E, Callan MB, et al. 2021 ISFM Consensus Guidelines on the Collection and Administration of Blood and Blood Products in Cats. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery. 2021;23(5):410-432. doi:10.1177/1098612X211007071. PubMed.
- Lo Iacono G, Taylor SS, Ferreira HCM, et al. Feline blood donation: Description and adverse reactions from 29,201 donation events between 2019 and 2023. Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine. 2024;38(6):3050-3062. doi:10.1111/jvim.17215. PubMed · Full article.
- Radcliffe RM, Bookbinder LC, Liu SY, et al. Collection and administration of blood products in horses: Transfusion indications, materials, methods, complications, donor selection, and blood testing. Journal of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care. 2022;32(S1):108-122. doi:10.1111/vec.13119. PubMed.
- Alharbi YM. Phenotype- and age-associated variations in non-specific agglutinins and complement components (C3 and C5a) in camels: Implications for transfusion compatibility and immune function. Veterinary World. 2025;18(9):2811-2822. doi:10.14202/vetworld.2025.2811-2822. PubMed · Full text.
- Shaw S, Tully T, Nevarez J. Avian transfusion medicine. Compendium: Continuing Education for Veterinarians. 2009;31(12):E1-E7. PubMed.
- Hahn A, Sturgeon G, Rossi J. Blood Product Transfusions in Great Apes: A Retrospective Review of 12 Cases. Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine. 2017;48(2):461-465. doi:10.1638/2016-0178R3.1. PubMed.
- Carmezim S, Rojo-Solis C, Valls M, et al. Immune-mediated hemolytic anemia in a bottlenose dolphin: case report and literature review. Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation. 2024;36(6):852-858. doi:10.1177/10406387241276032. PubMed · Full text.
- BluePearl Pet Hospital. This Blood Donor Month, Consider a Lifesaving Donation from Your Pet. 6 Jan 2026. Reports 7,000 transfusions in 2025 and almost 50% of blood products sourced from the BluePearl Pet Blood Bank. Source.
- BluePearl Pet Hospital. Our Pet Blood Bank: Saving Lives One Drop at a Time. PetLife. 2026. Reports approximately 8,000 transfusions annually and commercial blood-product back orders of up to six months. Source PDF.