FDA drops ball on public meeting about pet food
By Christie Keith
May 13, 2008
The FDA, in yet another glorious chapter in its ongoing non-response to the massive pet food recall of 2007 — the largest consumer recall in history — wrapped up its “all day” meeting today after 90 minutes, due to lack of participation. According to Eddie over at Pets for the Environment, by the time he arrived with messages from thousands of pet owners in a poop bag, the meeting had already ended. Not one media representative was there, nor a single person and only one representative from any animal advocacy group — Mike Floyd from Defend Our Pets. Nor could anyone stick around to answer their questions, although it does make you wonder, since the meeting was supposed to go until 4 PM, just why everyone had to rush off so fast.
As I reported yesterday, FDA will continue to accept public comments until June 13, so it’s not too late to let them know what’s on your mind. And even if you think you already did, do it again, because there are reports coming in from all over that people’s comments aren’t being included. Perhaps it’s because there was a mid-process docket number change. Perhaps it’s because there was some kind of problem with the website where Internet users could leave their comments. Perhaps, as someone suggested over on Eddie’s blog, it’s because there is some kind of arcane requirement that you have to opt in to having your comment made public.
If you haven’t commented, do it now. And even if you already think you commented, go here, and if you don’t see your comment, do it again. How?
First, go here.
There is a line that says “Meeting Being Planned to Obtain Public Input for Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food,” dated January 7, 2008. At the far right on that same line, there is a little yellow button in the “Add Comments” column. Click on it.
Use the new docket number: FDA-2007-N-0442.
Be sure to indicate your comment is intended for public viewing.
Don’t trust the Interwebz?
Send written comment submissions to the Division of Dockets Management (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852. Don’t forget to include the docket number: FDA-2007-N-0442. Tell them you want your comment to be public.
If you have submitted a comment and don’t see it on the website, you can call 301-827-6860 and ask to have it scanned.
And let us know here if you have any trouble getting your comments to the FDA. Encourage your friends to respond as well. Remember, FDA got more phone calls and complaints about the pet food recall than on any other issue in their history. Don’t let them think we don’t care.
Well, the procedure you’ve described, much less the “day long” public meeting, certainly suggests a disconnect between the FDA’s purported desire for public imput and how difficult they make it for the public to provide same.
I have a dog who was temporarily affected by tainted food (which is what brought me, like so many others, to Pet Connection), so I think I’ll take a look at the online comment process and, if I feel my eyes starting to glaze over, will resort to snail mail. Thanks for posting the address.
Comment by Susan Fox — May 13, 2008 @ 7:10 pm
Heckuva job, Brownie.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 13, 2008 @ 7:26 pm
Ouch.
Comment by Susan Fox — May 13, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
Did anyone else read this?
“FDA is sponsoring an additional public meeting as part of its Animal Feed Safety System (AFSS) initiative on May 14, 2008, at the same location as the May 13, 2008, FDAAA public meeting.”
http://www.fda.gov/OHRMS/DOCKETS/98fr/08-1155.htm
Comment by Joy — May 13, 2008 @ 8:52 pm
There’s always January 2009, I suppose.
Comment by Mark Bullock — May 13, 2008 @ 9:18 pm
Yes, I mentioned that in my original post, Joy…
Comment by Christie Keith — May 13, 2008 @ 9:55 pm
oh. Sorry. :-)
Comment by Joy — May 13, 2008 @ 10:04 pm
I’ve printed mine out to mail today as it didn’t show up on the website. If it does end up appearing there at some point, that’ll be good too. I think my suggestions are so good, they should be read twice, haha.
Comment by slt — May 14, 2008 @ 6:47 am
Beside media and animal organizations, why wasnt there info provided about what FDA has already come up with to enact FDAAA so that people could ask questions about it? Oh I forgot its only been 8 months since Congress put this order in place so I guess they havent had enough time……sigh. I think Ive now submitted comment package #5 to FDA, hopefully it wont end up in the same receptacle the prior 4 did….
Comment by Sandi K — May 14, 2008 @ 7:45 am
I need to amend my statement above as Mike Floyd from Defend Our Pets did show up but like the rest of you, I was hoping to see ASPCA, or some private vets that are concerned about our pets food and it would have been even better if they would have let pet parents testify via phone teleconferencing…
Comment by Sandi K — May 14, 2008 @ 7:48 am
Thanks, Sandi! I updated the post with the info about Mike Floyd from Defend Our Pets.
Comment by Christie Keith — May 14, 2008 @ 9:36 am
There is some video of yesterday’s meeting at truthaboutpetfood.com
http://www.truthaboutpetfood.com/FDAmeeting.html
Comment by Carol V — May 14, 2008 @ 10:10 am
Anyone that can watch the video and give a report?
Comment by slt — May 14, 2008 @ 10:49 am
I don’t know where to post this. Sorry if it’s the wrong forum….but can anyone tell me more about the 2/2008 Import Alert involving Melamine and Jiangsu Peidi Brand pet foods?
Comment by Joy — May 14, 2008 @ 11:00 am
Joy—-go to itchmoforums——-
http://itchmoforums.com/news-r.....795.0.html
Comment by Carol V — May 14, 2008 @ 11:04 am
Does anyone know if Jiangsu Peidi does private label pet foods?
Their site says their “main customers” are Dingo Brand, PetEdge, RedBarn, Penn-Plax, Armitage, VPG, Hagen, Wilkingson, Friskies, Pet Brand, Master Pet and SunRise.
Comment by Joy — May 14, 2008 @ 11:13 am
I just talked to Ryan at the phone number provided by Christie-to find out why my comments are not showing up—he said the reason indiviual consumers’ comments are not showing up is they are posting only companies comments-he said they have too few people working on this and too many comments to post them all—he suggests saying you are part of an organization so the comments are public—he also told me he had just gotten a picture of a dead cat but I think it might have been the picture I attached of Smudge who is still alive but this pix was taken in March of 2007—he said that was not a good idea but I said that this is what happened to our pets real fast and I think it is very appropriate the FDA members see it. He said even though the comments are not made public they are sent on to the FDA members..
Sorry if I sound mad but this has been like the merry go round ride of March 2007…
Comment by Carol V — May 14, 2008 @ 11:31 am
The companies that poisoned our pets get to comment and pet owners don’t?
Wow.
Comment by JuliaMartin — May 14, 2008 @ 12:13 pm
Someone should bring this discussion thread to the attention of Dick Durbin . . . . .
Comment by The OTHER Pat — May 14, 2008 @ 12:26 pm
I just started a company. It’s called “Pet owners who’d like to have their comments made public just like the corporations do”. Anyone want to join my company?
; )
Comment by slt — May 14, 2008 @ 12:29 pm
I just got off the phone with Bart Stupak’s office…someone suggested I let him know!
Comment by Carol V — May 14, 2008 @ 1:51 pm
This is why I’ve been making my own dog food for years. If you want to really get the pet food companies’ attention, stop buying their product and make your own. It’s not hard. Maybe if they see a huge drop in profit, they’ll start taking this serious.
Comment by Rhonda Diercks — May 14, 2008 @ 3:09 pm
Pretty as it would be, to think that Bart Stupak can do something, he can’t.
The FDA does not work for the government Bart Stupak does and we all know it, congress and the senate can’t get a document or a straight answer out of the FDA, much less control the FDA.
There is not going to be safer pet, or human, food.
Comment by JuliaMartin — May 15, 2008 @ 6:03 am
I purchased the webcast of the FDA’s pet food safety meeting. It lasted only 90 minutes. I video taped the entire thing and have posted the videos on my site. The page for the videos is http://www.TruthAboutPetFood.com/FDAmeeting.html
Mike Floyd did a FANTASTIC job speaking for pet owners.
Comment by Susan Thixton — May 15, 2008 @ 7:18 am
Another poster at itchmo received some more helpful info so our comments are public—and maybe give more courage to others to write in! 5catmom did me permission to crosspost this.
OK Everyone,
Just got off the phone with Urnestine Ezzard (a nice guy). He works for Dockets Management Division and is the contact for the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine.
He said to get your comments posted at regulations.gov you must:
1. Write at the top of your comment: PLEASE POST TO REGULATIONS.GOV
2. In your comment, do not include personal information such as your telephone no., address, email address. (due to privacy concerns)
3. Try the above, and if your comment doesn’t get posted call Urnestine at 301/827-6863
Here’s the link again:
http://www.regulations.gov/fdm.....007-N-0442
Any problems with these directions, please let me know.
5CatMom
http://itchmoforums.com/law-an.....3#msg63783
Comment by Carol V — May 15, 2008 @ 7:19 am
With “stealth” recalls, silent “product withdrawals” and the help of the FDA keeping “official numbers” low and the media silent or parroting PFI propaganda, abetted by intimidation tactics like this
http://itchmoforums.com/news-r.....4.180.html
Pet food is significantly _less_ safe this year.
By next year, no grieving or desperate pet owner with a sick or dead pet will be able to get any coherent information on the internet without being threatened.
Comment by JuliaMartin — May 15, 2008 @ 7:32 am
Rhonda posted: This is why I’ve been making my own dog food for years. If you want to really get the pet food companies’ attention, stop buying their product and make your own. It’s not hard. Maybe if they see a huge drop in profit, they’ll start taking this serious.”
In the beginning, commercial pet food was a hard sell. Back when most families still shared food from the table with their pets, commercial pet food companies were desperately looking for ways to increase their sales. So, in 1964 at a meeting of the Pet Food Institute (PFI), a commercial dog food maker came up with the brilliant idea to discourage people from feeding anything at all to their pets but commercial kibble and canned products…make it dangerous!
It was at this meeting the term “table scraps” was coined as a derogatory twist to the age old practice of food-sharing with pets. What followed was a huge advertising blitz falsely warning consumers that their pets could get sick or die from eating “people food” instead of “pet food”. Of course it was a lie, but it worked.
This sort of marketing has been going on ever since and weirdly, even some veterinarians have bought into the idea. Imagine a person intelligent enough to master a medical degree believing that somehow a bag of extruded or canned chunks labeled “chicken & veggies” is always safe and nutritious while whole chicken & veggies from the family table is always unsafe if not downright deadly! Crazy.
So anyway…it’s not surprising that since the pet food recall there’s been this new surge of “scientific research” claiming once again that “people food” is dangerous for pets and might even cause debilitating disease or kill them.
I suspect the more people choose home-cooking, the more aggressive the industry will become in publishing more and more scary “research” meant to frighten us back into the pet food aisles.
Comment by Joy — May 15, 2008 @ 8:59 am
Not only have “some” Vets bought into the idea that kibble is best and feeding pets from your kitchen is bad, I would say it’s the overwhelming majority of Vets, including Stephen Sundlof.
Comment by slt — May 15, 2008 @ 9:39 am
Most vets get kickbacks from pet food companies, so it’s not really surprising at all.
Comment by Pai — May 15, 2008 @ 9:44 am
We’ve previously said that veterinarians put themselves in difficult position by selling food. Even if having food for sale doesn’t influence their recommendations of what to feed your pet, it certainly looks questionable to any thinking person that they’re recommending what they sell. (Even if they truly do believe in in the products, which many do.)
But the money they are getting from food sales isn’t a “kickback.” It’s the mark-up, the difference between what they pay for the food and what they sell it for.
To call it a “kickback” suggests an illegality and immorality that doesn’t exist, unless you believe that everyone with a resale license is likewise engaged in immoral business practices.
Retail and pharmacy sales have long been a part of veterinary practice, and it can be argued that they have helped offset the cost of medical care.
In my dream world, veterinarians would not sell food and would happily write script for you to have the choice of price-shopping for your pets’ medications.
But that’s not the business model currently.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 15, 2008 @ 9:55 am
And the other problem is that the core courses vets take don’t include much by way of nutrition. Many years ago, the pet food companies (Hills in particular) got their foot in the door by providing “free of charge” nutrition seminars as a stand-in for actual coursework in animal nutrition. So the vets are being taught - BY THE PET FOOD COMPANIES - that pet food is “complete and balanced” and that homefeeding puts the animal at risk of having a nutritionally incomplete or unbalanced diet.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — May 15, 2008 @ 10:00 am
Hill’s and companies like it are still teaching nutrition in veterinary colleges and of course offering some pretty sweet incentives to students and graduates.
And Hill’s being the number one employer of veterinarians in the world (other pet food companies following close behind), one would be hard-pressed to find a veterinary research publication concerning nutrition that wasn’t funded by a pet food company.
So no matter how or where it’s taught, the “science” behind most all dog/cat nutrition knowledge was prepared, funded and distributed by commercial pet food makers.
Comment by Joy — May 15, 2008 @ 10:34 am
Those points have been made here countless times, including by us, and are separate from the charge of “kickbacks.”
To suggest that practicing veterinarians are doing something illegal like taking “kickbacks” when what they’re doing is running a retail operation within a medical practice is unfair.
Should veterinarians be running a retail operation? I’d say no. It presents the appearance of a conflict of interest, at the very least.
It’s pretty clear that veterinarians need more non-corporate-sponsored education in nutrition — and that more independent research needs to be done.
But the suggestion that veterinary recommendations of a commercial product are some sort of money-grubbing evil falls apart when you consider that most making those recommendations are feeding those products to their own beloved pets. Pets I’m guessing they’re not interested in hurting.
I’m not defending the practice of selling food in veterinary practices, nor am I shilling for pet food companies. I just hate to see loaded terms like “kickback” being used unfairly.
And for the record, my animals and I eat mostly home-prepared meals, from local, whole and mostly organic ingredients we can fully source.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 15, 2008 @ 10:48 am
Gina, I agree “kickback” isn’t the correct word as long as veterinary retailing of pet food is a legal enterprise.
I just think that since commercial pet food is sold as the sole source of nutrition (and since we live in such a stethoscope-worshipping world!) doctor-selling should be regulated similar to how infant formula is regulated within hospitals and doctor offices.
I’m not sure of the exact laws/regulations but I know pediatricians and hospitals are not allowed to sell, wholesale endorse or hand out free samples of infant formula. Also the makers of formula are required to do everything they can to mimic breast milk when developing their wares.
Too bad pet food makers aren’t required to do the same…we would see a whole lot less carnivores eating flavor-enhanced bags of corn wheat.
Comment by Joy — May 15, 2008 @ 11:16 am
Gina, I wasn’t responding to the “kickback” post. I was responding to the one before it by slt which read:
“Not only have ‘some’ Vets bought into the idea that kibble is best and feeding pets from your kitchen is bad, I would say it’s the overwhelming majority of Vets, including Stephen Sundlof.”
Comment by The OTHER Pat — May 15, 2008 @ 12:14 pm
“kickbacks” is considerably nicer than some things said about the vets after the last 18 months.
And quite a bit nicer than some of the things _vets_ said to those of us trying to home cook or get to the truth about why our pets died.
Do you remember the popular “Can’t be the food, you let your pet get into something.”
Do you remember the deafening silence of 99.9% of the vets?
Some of us will never forget.
No matter how politically correct you want it said, what the vets did, and failed to do, was, all of it, not right.
Vets lost a ton of the respect pet owners had, as in past tense, for them this last 18 months.
BooHoo.
Bone up on ethics and boot the poisoners out your clinic door, then get to saying mea culpa for not getting up on the hind legs and standing up for the pets and the pet owners. Until then, I can’t hear anything a vet who was silent during the recall has to say.
Comment by JuliaMartin — May 15, 2008 @ 12:25 pm
And quite a bit nicer than some of the things _vets_ said to those of us trying to home cook or get to the truth about why our pets died.
When I told my vet I wanted to home-cook, she gave me recipes, and advice on where to buy the ingredients that don’t come standard in human food. Does she deserve your sweeping and all-encompassing contempt too?
Comment by Lis — May 15, 2008 @ 1:18 pm
Don’t know where else to post this. Has anyone else heard this news. It was on the local tv station this evening that there’s a chemical (yeah what else is new) in the dog food that we should be cautious in handling it. We should wash our hands after handling kibble and even pet treats.
Gawd! what next! And we should let our pets eat this! I only caught the tail end (play on words)
so what was the chemical. Anyone know?
Comment by VJ — May 15, 2008 @ 4:28 pm
VJ yes-here’s a link
http://www.reuters.com/article.....7120080515
and some more comments about it..
http://www.reuters.com/article.....7120080515
Comment by Carol V — May 15, 2008 @ 5:05 pm
oops—here’s the second one I meant to post sorry—
http://itchmoforums.com/news-r.....g63924#new
Comment by Carol V — May 15, 2008 @ 5:06 pm
The FDA, and probably others, have suggested washing hands after handling pet food/treats due to risk of salmonella. Maybe this is what you caught the end of?
Comment by slt — May 15, 2008 @ 5:14 pm
Lis, that you did not force feed yet more poison into your dying pet,prescription poison, sold by the vet, is good.
Many of us did.
That your vet was supportive in home cooking is likewise good, and rare. I guess a good vet does not really need to pimp pet food to pay off the school loans, maybe this fabulous news should be made available to everyone who says that vets must be excused from ethical concerns on economic grounds?
There were a few, very few, vets who acted during the recall, and since, in a way that does not disgrace the entire profession.
The rest of the vets (99.9) _did_ disgrace the entire profession.
Some vets insist on disgracing the profession daily, by being dismissive or insulting to pet owners who have concerns about commercial pet food.
Looks real bad for the entire profession.
Come to think of it, there is just a whole long list of things the vets have let slide that look really bad for the entire profession.
Vets are being paid big money, today, by people who have pets still suffering the effects of the poison and if that vet is _still_silent,
then it is blood money.
The interest on blood money is high.
Comment by JuliaMartin — May 16, 2008 @ 6:53 am
>vets must be excused from ethical concerns on economic grounds?
No one has said that here. No one.
Were it not for veterinarians, sharing and asking for help through the Veterinary Information Network, chances are pretty good that the thousands of deaths would never have been considered more than rare, isolated incidents not related to food at all. It was the veterinary community that put the pieces together. And it was the veterinary community, though VIN, who pushed for the real numbers to be known, when the FDA was saying less than 20 pets had died, instead of thousands.
What veterinarians are doing selling food is perfectly legal, and that they feed the products they sell to their own pets says a lot about how much they believe in them, whether that’s right or wrong.
Now, I’ve long argued that retail products don’t belong in a medical practice. MDs have long been legally prohibited from many of the trade practices routinely found in the veterinary practices. (And yet, the regulations haven’t exactly kept ethical concerns at bay in human medicine, has it?)
We’ve all pretty much agreed that the average veterinarian relies too heavily on corporate-sponsored “nutrition training” in school and in continuing education.
But there are and continue to be changes. In the last few years I’ve seen many more veterinarians volunteering to write script, and even tell clients where the prescription can be filled for less money. This is very recent. The move away from annual vaccines (NOT RECOMMENDED) to annual physicals is also recent, and a noteworthy development.
The shake-out after the pet-food recalls is still ongoing, and it’s too early to know how it will eventually play out in veterinary practices.
Kicking retail to the curb and focusing solely on medicine in veterinary practices are reforms that would help pet-owners be informed care-givers and trusting, educated and questioning partners with their veterinarians, able to make better choices on behalf of their pets. (It does need to be noted, at least in passing, that removing the retail income will have to mean that medical costs will get higher.)
Removing retails would also (I believe) be a good move for the veterinary profession, in terms of enhanced credibility.
But to say that veterinarians covered up or continue to cover up these problems is just plain wrong. Just as with what I’ve been writing about horse-racing, there’s a lot of soul-searching and quest for reform coming from within.
Bad vets? Lazy vets? Greedy vets? Oh sure, they exist. Bad, lazy and greedy journalists, too (just not here!).
But don’t tar them all with the same brush.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — May 16, 2008 @ 8:15 am
The vets tarred themselves and are doing diddley to get clean. There is a lot of that going around.
Hanging out with the PFI seems to give a taste for the dirty to some.
Nothing was mentioned about the journalistic abilities or ethics of anyone at petconnection.
Not a single word.
If , be generous and say 90%, of a profession acts like jerks, then that profession looks bad.
Getting the tar off the vets who covered themselves with something that does not smell like roses? Gonna be a dirty job.
Props to the , be generous-say 5-10% of vets who did the right thing.
Really, good job , thanks, wish there were a lot more good vets, we all wish that.
But if 90% of vets sell pet food, were silent about the poisoning and the screwing the pet owners are getting and has lips firmly planted on PFI butt cheeks (the percentage was much higher than 90%) that pet owners noticed is no surprise.
Comment by JuliaMartin — May 16, 2008 @ 9:38 am
Even if vets insist on selling foods, I would feel a lot better if they at least tried to avoid selling products containing the most commonly known to be (whether accidentally or intentionally) adulterated raw ingredients: waste grain (corn, soy, wheat) byproducts of those waste grains (gluten, meal, etc.) and any of the multitude of raw ingredients collected from the rendering industry.
I do this in my store. For years now I have refused to sell a single food with any amount whatsoever of these ingredients because 1) they are unnecessary, 2) they are not nutritious, 3) these byproducts are very poorly regulated for safety and 3) most every pet food recall in history can be blamed on these cheap raw ingredient sources.
And somehow I manage to offer aisles and aisles of various brands of pet food within the same price range as, and in some cases more affordable than, the other brands. Wouldn’t it make a lot of sense if vets decided to reject brands containing those unsafe ingredients in favor of more wholesome ones? All they need to do is what more and more consumers are doing, these days…learn to read and understand the ingredients panel.
I can’t exactly say I predicted the pet food recall, not to the magnitude it turned out….but I did know that grain and rendering waste were unnecessary and potentially dangerous ingredients. And I knew that, since they make up the bulk of most pet foods, when/if they were adulterated at the pre-mix stage, it would be a significant event.
But because none contained any amount of corn/wheat/soy or their glutens, not a single brand in my store was involved in the 2007 pet food recall.
It’s not a perfect solution but I think the least people who sell pet food can do is try to educate themselves about raw ingredients and how the industry collects, manufactures, regulates ad labels them.
Comment by Joy — May 17, 2008 @ 7:53 am