FDA goes all widgety in effort to better communications
By Gina Spadafori
December 8, 2009
Christie and I just got off a conference call with the FDA where they introduced a widget to help people report problems with pets foods and find out about recalls. The FDA stressed that the widget is being tried in the area of pet health first, which I guess is as good an acknowlegment as any that pet-owners have proven to be an audience no one dare take lightly. Here’s the widget, and gee, does that cat look familiar to anyone else? (Yes, thanks to the pet food recall, I actually DO know the location of every possible piece of stock photography featuring a dog/cat and pet food.)
The widget’s fine, a good idea. Our concern is what information will improve — or not — with the use of the widget. Currently, we see not only “hidden pullbacks” of products that are never reported to the public, but also recalls that are reported to and by the FDA weeks and even months after the food was pulled off the shelves.
While delayed reporting of toxic product may help to get any that missed the recall off the retailers’ shelves or out of a pet-lover’s cupboard, it’s still not good enough. When a food is suspect enough that the manufacturer knows there’s a problem and the FDA is looking into that problem, we need to know right away, not at the close of the investigation.
In matters of public health, concern over the ”reputation” of the manufacturer should take a back seat. When a food is suspect, everyone should know so they can avoid the product until it’s either formally recalled, shown to be safe, or made safe again.
The conference was very short, with one unrelated question from a trade publication and one from me, asking about the problem we have with the reporting of food problems, whether by media release, on the FDA Web site or through a widget. The answer seems to be that the widget is just another way to get the information out, not a way to improve the timeliness of the information — but my follow-up question regarding this didn’t get out before they wrapped everything up.
Look, we sure appreciate any and all efforts to get information out more quickly, but if the quality and timeliness of the information that comes through a cutey-pie widget isn’t any bettter, well … it’s not going to do anyone much good.
We’ve asked to get this question and others answered in a follow-up interview. We’ll let you know what the answer is.
All I can say is … Premium Edge Cat Food….Class I recall….months and months…(editing profanity)
Comment by Carol V — December 8, 2009 @ 1:50 pm
Widget info is so AWFULly relevant, 2005 article
on getting pets ready for the holidays. Do the folks at FDA/CVM mean this as their view of pet food consumers do you think? Do veterinarians
seriously think that if consumers knew of pet food problems most would take the chance of feeding that pet food after 2007?
Comment by concern4pets — December 8, 2009 @ 2:08 pm
Joshua Sharfstein, the FDA Deputy Commissioner leading the agency’s transparency task force, has offered to answer questions later this week regarding the reporting of time-sensitive information.
We’ll get with him and update the situation in a later blog post.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — December 8, 2009 @ 4:22 pm
Change we can believe in? Yes we can…. but apparently no we won’t.
Comment by Nathan Winograd — December 8, 2009 @ 4:23 pm
“Change we can believe in? Yes we can…. but apparently no we won’t.
Comment by Nathan Winograd — December 8, 2009 @ 4:23 pm”
To requote Handel, “All we, like sheep….” and the answer is No. We aren’t. At least not for the participants of PetConnection. We need, deserve and pay for with our tax dollars timely notification of any and all problems with our food supply for ourselves and our pets. All the widgets in the world won’t help if the information released is not immediate!
Comment by Anne T — December 8, 2009 @ 4:34 pm
I listened to that, although I wasn’t able to get on until just before Sanjay spoke, so I don’t know what I missed. Did you feel like they answered your question fully?
Comment by Kim Campbell Thornton — December 8, 2009 @ 5:57 pm
Did you feel like they answered your question fully?
Comment by Kim Campbell Thornton — December 8, 2009
Yes, which is to say that it confirmed for me that this cool widgety thing changes nothing until the law gives the FDA the ability to force companies to recall toxic product and report it officially and immediately.
Until the laws are changed to favor consumers over industry, the duplicity of companies that do everything to hide problems with their products will continue until enough pets or people drop dead to force the issue.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — December 8, 2009 @ 7:09 pm
The FDA, the 16 dead, the “all the food on store shelves is just fine” -that- FDA thinks a widget will help?
With what?
A faster lie is still just a lie and the one thing the FDA can be counted on to do is lie and cover up. Probably won’t be all that fast anyway. They will just use the widget as an excuse, “Oh, this new technology messed up, it is not our fault that it failed until all the deadly products got sold and eaten, bring out your dead.” Then the FDA will lie about many dead you brought out.
I do not trust the FDA any further than I can throw any of my dead pets and thanks in great part to the FDA, there are plenty of dead pets to be a flinging. There will be more.
Dead babies too.
I said the whole bright new world of blogger/FDA cooperation much ballyhooed for Tuesday would amount to nothing, be insulting to pet owners at the very least if not outright offensive and that is exactly how it turned out.
The FDA does not need any more power, they abuse what they have now. The FDA does not need any more money, they would abuse that too.
Food would not be any more dangerous if the entire FDA vanished overnight, it might be safer if they did. A new agency would take years to reach the level of corruption the FDA has managed to attain, perhaps decades.
I do not buy the excuse that the FDA is just incompetent, they are doing a cracker jack job for big food and pharma.
Comment by diedmarch172007 — December 9, 2009 @ 8:37 am
You know, I actually agree with much of what you say, but saying “I do not” and “I said” while not putting your name to your opinions is less than convincing to anyone.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — December 9, 2009 @ 8:46 am
If the FDA already has the legal authority to do the things that some here are claiming, can somebody point me to both the specific law and the regulations that created this authority? Beyond that, does the FDA have adequate funding after years and years of budget cuts by hostile administrations?
There’s lots of changes I’d like to see such as mandatory COO labeling and a lot more auditing/testing of foods for safety, but I’m not convinced that the FDA has the legal authority or budget to do these things. If not, then perhaps we need to be contacting our US congressional reps and US senators.
Comment by LauraS — December 9, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
We tried that. The Bill is stalled, forever. No one wants to upset the applecart of Big Pharma and Agribusiness. Too many perks at stake.
Comment by Anne T — December 9, 2009 @ 4:37 pm
What did we try? My apologies for coming late to this party.
Comment by LauraS — December 9, 2009 @ 4:50 pm
The FDA is a formerly great agency, like FEMA, and both were starved nearly to death and then handed over to industry to play with. As Grover Norquist has so remarkably said, the goal of the modern conservative movement has been government so small it would fit in a bathtub.
We got an idea of what that bathtub looked like: It was called New Orleans, during Katrina.
No doubt there is waste and mismanagement in government, at all levels, and these problems need to be addressed.
But I am not libertarian enough to wish all government away, and I doubt that who actually looks at what it was like before the reforms of the Progressive Era (one of which was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which start the FDA) would want that, either.
The FDA needs to be given the power to force recalls and the mandate to serve the public again. This has not yet happened, although I am seeing some movement in that direction.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — December 9, 2009 @ 6:23 pm
http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm193736.htm
I don’t see this recall on the Widget…sigh…
Comment by Carol V — December 10, 2009 @ 12:22 pm
The Pet Carousel recall just made the widget - several hours after it was posted to Twitter, and who knows how long since it was posted to the FDA website, where the announcement is dated yesterday.
Comment by Eucritta — December 10, 2009 @ 12:46 pm
I will ask the FDA about that Monday when I have the interview with the Deputy Director.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — December 10, 2009 @ 2:06 pm
I guess Im not seeing the difference between the widget and signing up for FDA recall notices which we have been able to do for a long time now….dont we get the same info from both sources? I dont see how this widget speeds anything up but maybe Im not understanding something. Im having a hard time figuring FDA out. I dont like to generalize because I know there are caring people who work there and for CVM but at the same time, it appears to me that they really think a pet food co will come forward and tell them everything when they find a problem with their food. It remains to be seen whether the new Reportable Food Registry will help improve things but its my understanding that its not legally enforced or required. Im afraid they expect this sort of “honor system” to work but I think its time they realize that stiffer laws and regs are what is needed when it comes to pet food safety.
Thanks Gina and Christie for following up with more questions.
Comment by Sandi K — December 23, 2009 @ 4:15 pm