pet connection

Next week, I head to Global Pet Expo, a massive annual pet-industry trade show. While I was there last year, they handed me a fancy piece of Plexiglas that informed everyone I was the Pet Journalist of the Year.

I got home, and before I had even unpacked I found myself having to truly live up to that title, along with the entire Pet Connection team, especially Contributing Editor Christie Keith. We found ourselves at Ground Zero of a story with implications far beyond the world of cool new pet gear, life-saving new veterinary procedures and how to help shelters pets find homes. We were covering a story with global trade implications, a disturbing tale of Wild West capitalism run amok in China, with the pet deaths the first of waves of product contamination alerts.

Where are we now?

Indictments yesterday, of course, one documentary out and at least one book (by food industry expert Marion Nestle) to come. And a whole lot of food-company executives who have now learned the old adage, “You get what you pay for” — if your supplier’s price is to good to be true, well, you need to look into it.

And of course, thousands of pet-lovers with boxes of ashes on their bookcases, pictures of dead pets on their mantles and veterinary bills they’re still paying off on their credit cards while compensation claims and class-action lawsuits grind through the system.

At the Pet Connection, we figured something really horrific was going on when we realized that veterinarians all across the country had been frantically comparing notes on what seemed to be a great many isolated cases of pet deaths and illnesses, but with the same symptoms. This sharing of news on e-mail lists and on peer-to-peer networks like the Veterinary Information Network was — and remains — an imperfect system, since there wasn’t — and still isn’t — a national reporting system that could alert the government to a health emergency in our animal populations.

Why this remains so in the age of potential bio-terror and random cross-species crossover horrors like the avian flu eludes my ability to comprehend. Our animals are the canaries in the coal mine, and as bad as the death toll was in our pets — thousands, up to tens of thousands killed — it could have been much, much worse, in both animal and human populations.

These problems are no doubt partly due to the FEMA-ization of the FDA, although unlike the gutted, crony-led FEMA, the underfunded and demoralized FDA did the best it could in impossible circumstances — and continues to, although it’s not enough.

So why is there still not a national veterinary reporting system for a nationwide emergence of disease that is not only killing animals but could also potentially already be in or emerging in the human population? And why are we still unable to inspect all but the tiniest percentage of imported foods?

That’s a good question for the presidential candidates, and I hope we don’t have to ask it when we have another food-related emergency, maybe this time in the human food system.

Abigail Goldman of the Los Angeles Times recaps yesterday’s events and puts some flesh on the bones of yesterday’s indictments:

Although the United States does not have an extradition treaty with China, Wood said the Justice Department would seek arrest warrants for Mao and Chen that could be enforced should either man travel outside China. The indictment also could prevent the companies from doing business with U.S. companies, Wood said.

The Chinese government shut down Xuzhou Anying last year and arrested Mao. Prior to his arrest, Mao said in an interview that he had done nothing wrong. Wood said it was unclear if Mao was still in custody.

Suzhou Textiles reportedly has denied involvement in the case, and there is no indication that its company has been shut down or anybody arrested. Businesses are closed for the Chinese new year holiday this week, and no one answered the phone Wednesday at Suzhou Textiles’ office in Suzhou, an hour’s drive from Shanghai.

For some pet owners, many of whom were radicalized by the scandal as they grieved for sick and dying animals or worried that pets could succumb to the toxins, the indictments came as a surprise.

“I didn’t think anyone in government thought it was all that serious because it was ‘just pets,’ ” said Christie Keith, a contributing editor for PetConnection.com, which last year became a clearinghouse for information about the tainted food as well as a site that thousands of pet owners turned to for moral support.

“Whether it satisfies me or not depends on what happens,” Keith added.

“If the penalties end up being big enough or even if the process is onerous enough that it can have a deterrent effect on companies both here and overseas, then it might have a positive impact.”

Honestly, that’s our best hope.

Update: Forbes has more. And yes, you did hear correctly: NPR did cite 4,000 deaths. I spit coffee. Finally, some small realization of the true scope of the disaster, if not its implications.