pet connection

First, the laugh for the day. Nancy Peterson is drawing names for door prizes and one of the prizes is a 15-minute reading from a cat communicator. Amy Shojai, president of CWA, pipes up: “I don’t want to know what my cat thinks.” Laughter all around.

Marion starts by telling how she, a human nutritionist who studies food systems, came to write Pet Food Politics. She’s interested in obesity and food safety, which of course are important for animals as well as people. Today’s food safety threats include food quantity (too many calories and too few), microbes such as Salmonella and E. coli, etc. The argument of her book is that if we don’t clean up the safety of pet food, it’s going to affect human food. Her interest started with her book What To Eat, a book about the human food supply and how to think about food issues. Talks about looking at pet food during the writing of that book and not understanding what was on the labels. Her partner, who had a background in animal nutrition, would look at them and explain about the guaranteed analysis and so forth. She planned to do a chapter on pet food and decided it deserved its own book. She realized that the kinds of questions people were asking about pet food were the same questions people asked about human food.

Now she’s talking about the pet food recall. It became very apparent right from the beginning that the implications of the recall not only affected the pet food industry but also American government food safety regulations, foreign relations with countries like China, etc. I was having my first experience with investigative reporting. The surprises about this and there were a great many were the number of recalls. Explaining what wheat gluten is and how it’s made and that it’s expensive to make, which is why it was outsourced to China. Wheat gluten in health food stores is called seitan. Now she’s explaining that melamine is an industrial chemical that had also been outsourced to China. Used to make plastic dinnerware and Formica countertops. For years people have been trying to figure out what to do with the nitrogen in melamine. Unscrupulous people added melamine to protein so that any food it’s in will test as being higher in protein. Melamine by itself isn’t very toxic to the human or animal body, but it’s unstable and one of its breakdown products, cyanuric acid, formed crystals that blocked kidney function in cats.

Who knew that surplus pet food would be fed to farm animals, but pet food is highly nutritious…and animal feed makers feed surplus food to chicken, pigs and fish. Talks again about link between human and pet food supply. I got the feeling during the recalls that the FDA was floored by the response of pet owners being so upset about their pets eating tainted food. One of the problems was the complexity of the food distribution chain. Very difficult to trace where ingredients went. A lot of the facts of what had happened only came out when one of the distributors was indicted and the documentation was presented in the court case. It was never clear who manufactured the tainted wheat gluten.

People didn’t know that so many of our food ingredients were made in China like citric acid and vitamins and minerals. NYT reporter found out melamine had been added to pet food for years. 80 percent of China’s food production is done in very small scale decentralized companies, basically backyard factories. China has cracked down on those factories since. Asked a USA Today reporter who was in Beijing for the Olympics to tell her what she saw in Chinese pet food stores and their shelves were very similar to those seen in American pet supply stores.

Now talking about the discovery of melamine in infant formula in China in fall 2008. Evidence that problems began a year earlier.

Result: bad economic situation for Menu Foods, although they are now back in the black. Implications for FDA and Congress. New legislation calls for standardization of ingredients but so far not much has happened.

We have one food supply and if it doesn’t work for pets it’s not going to work for people. We have a global food system that needs some regulation. CDC says there are 76 million cases of food poisoning each year, not counting pets. Lots of reports about how U.S. food supply isn’t particularly safe, and Nestle thinks that’s an understatement. Just this year alone, recalls of peanutbutter, pistachios and cookie dough.

What I find disturbing is the number of recalls that still continue. Pet food companies are not doing the kind of testing they need to. Laws regarding food safety have not changed much since 1906, when they were instituted after publication of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. The food safety system is divided in regulation between the FDA and the USDA and there are aspects of the food safety system that are so antiquated that they would be absurd if lives weren’t at stake. Many of problems in food supply are due to animal waste.

Too much is proposed but not passed or is voluntary not mandatory. Notes that FDA does not have recall authority, although it may after next week. FDA poorly staffed and cannot keep up with burden of oversights with which it’s tasked. So government passes on food safety responsibility to consumers.

Common ideas: single food safety agency for all food, pet or human; recall authority to FDA.

I think we’re in the middle of a food revolution. Slow food, organic, animal welfare, locavore.

Her mantra: “one food supply.”

Ends with slide of her “grandcat”

I’m here at the Cat Writers Association conference, and David Frei is speaking on pet-assisted therapy. I apologize in advance for any typos or missing info. I’m typing as fast as I can. I have misspelled Teigh’s name throughout, I see; it’s Teigh, not Tighe.

What they bring to us every single day is something very special.

Right now David is showing us a fabulous DVD of dogs, including James and Uno, visiting children at hospitals.

The images say it all, David says. You walk into the room with the animal and the energy changes immediately. We visit at the Women’s HEalth Unit at Sloan Kettering every week; we visit the ROnald McDonald House; the reaction is the same. The parents will say to us, ‘that’s the first time she’s smiled since she’s been here.’

Telling about visiting a man with dementia, an angry man who feels dumped by his family. As often happens with a boy and his dog, i’m an experimental case to see if we can make something happen. This guy looked up and he looked angry, and then he saw Belle, and he lights up and starts slapping his knee and says “Come here, you knucklehead,” and Belle goes and breaks the rules and jumps in his lap. I’m fighting back tears and the administrator is fighting back tears. Turns out the man had had Brittanys all his life and thought Belle was his dog.

When we’re dealing with kids, we say when a child is sick, the parents are sick too. when you’re making that child smile, you look over and see mom and dad and they’re smiling too.

You can walk into that room with a dog and talk to them about their dog at home or just get them to smile.

Tells about a girl with a spinal tumor who asks to walk Belle; she was fired up and ready to go. THe physical therapist told me, you just got her to do something I’ve been trying to get her to do for weeks.

David telling about his wife just starting to volunteer with their Brittany Tighe and how she decided to get a master’s in theology instead of an MBA and wrote her thesis on animal-assisted therapy and is now director of spiritual care for Ronald McDonald House. Our dogs were the first dogs ever allowed into bone marrow stem cell transplant center. When they start letting dogs in there it’s because they’ve pretty much decided they’re not going to make it. David is choking up telling a story about a girl they visited there who passed away. Her friends came over and told us that she loved the dogs and they loved the dogs for what they had done for her. I like working in the dog so nobody can see when I tear up.

Ron McD house gives us an adventure every week. there’s a kid who’s been there five years from Australia. He came there after his parents had been told he had only six months to live.

Telling about two young men at Mt. Sinai who see them with the dogs on a visit and one of them whistles at Tighe. Tighe rolls over for one of them. I think there’s a little food motivation going on there, David says, because the boys are being fed. The other one drops his arm off the chair and Tighe runs over and gives him five. By this time, they’re all crying and laughing, and Tighe thinks he’s the greatest thing ever.

I’m not changing the world; I’m just the guy on the other end of the leash. Now is telling about a woman who is paraplegic and gets a visit from Tighe. He gets up on her bed and lays there like a rock for 20 minutes–this is a dog who runs crazy in Central Park and chases squirrels, other crazy behavior, etc.

What we go through is nothing compared to what these kids go through every day. here’s another thing we often don’t talk about is the staff, what they go through. The staff breaks out from what they’re doing and they’re smiling to when they have an opportunity to interact with a dog.

Delta certifies rabbits. Rabbits are good for working in burn units, David says.

I think anybody who has a pet knows intuitively that when you go home and interact with them you feel better.

Now the science is starting to show it: your blood pressure goes down, your heart rate goes down; we need to do more research, but the medical profession is saying that this is good for patients.

Now I’m trying not to cry as he tells a touching story about the death of Belle and the relationship he had developed with a homeless veteran because of her.

We created Angel on a Leash as a charitable entity for the WKC four years ago and now it is a separate organization. We’re in 12 different facilities around the county…

Uno’s been a wonderful dog for us and I know many of you are dog writers as well and are familiar with Uno. Getting ready to show us another DVD. Telling us about Uno visiting Walter Reed after going to the White House. Uno met a double amputee marine there, who is now on the board of Angel on a Leash. We’re seeing Uno and this young man, Joshua Bleill, interact with kids at the Ronald McDonald House.

Just like when I saw this 18 months ago, people are blowing their noses, wiping away tears. Amy Shojai is pointing out that show cats would be good at this because they’re used to being handled.

Time to break for lunch; David is heading home to deal with a dog problem. Uh, oh!

Cavalier laugh for the day: I have a Mardi Gras mask, one of those half masks on a stick with feathers on it. I picked it up the other day to put it away–it had been out for Halloween–and on a whim I put it up to my face and turned toward Harper. Imagine a happy dog face immediately changing to horrified. Then she started barking at me. Too funny!

The secret ingredient in combating the sky-high incidence of respiratory disease in cats in shelters may turn out to be nothing more than room.

“Can you imagine living in a space the size of a bathtub?” Dr. Kate Hurley,  Director of the Koret Shelter Medicine Program at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, asked. “It’s ridiculous, but that’s what shelter cats kept in standard cages have to do.”

Not only are closely confined cats uncomfortable; they’re also much more prone to respiratory disease, a leading killer of shelter cats. That’s because feline upper respiratory infections — URI — are triggered not just by infection, but by stress.

“Feline URI is very closely related to stress,” she said. “Cats who get URIs are by definition experiencing severe stress, so it’s usually a marker for welfare as well as health. It gives us an idea how well shelters are doing not just in keeping cats healthy, but also how well we’re meeting their needs.”

Shelter medicine experts suspected that crowding and the resulting stress were at least partly to blame for high rates of URI in shelter cats, so the Morris Animal Foundation funded a study by Dr. Hurley:

[The study] is assessing disease incidence, cage layout and sanitation methods to determine how shelter housing affects stress and stress-related illnesses. Her research shows that prevalence of feline URI varies wildly across the country—with anywhere from 5 percent to 60 percent of shelter cats getting sick. Environmental risk factors explain some of the variation, and so far, shelters with the lowest URI rates seem to be those with high-quality housing for cats.

The first stage of the study, which was just completed, involved gathering data to find out what shelter management practices resulted in the lowest rates of feline URI.

All the cats coming into shelters had similar health levels, but the cats housed in the most crowded conditions had the highest rates of URI — often extremely high. So the second phase of the study involves comparing cats in typical crowded shelter conditions with cats housed much less intensively.

Dr. Hurley’s team is overseeing a remake of the cat housing at a nearby shelter, the Yolo County Animal Services facility. “We ripped out the old traditional small cages and put in 11 new improved units,” she said.

The new cages are multi-level cat-condos with an elevated resting shelf, multiple hiding places, and enclosed litter boxes. The cages are made of stainless steel, which can be a noisy material for feline housing, but has the best acceptance by shelter directors.

“We wanted something shelters would actually use,” Hurley said. “Steel can be noise-reflective, so the manufacturer replaced some of the parts with polymer components that are easily replaced but quieter to open and close. There is also sound-dampening on the cages, and the resting bench is also polymer, which is quieter and warmer, but can still be cleaned.”

Most importantly, the cat condos are twice the size of a standard cat cage, allowing each cat a full three feet to stretch out. “This is a big push, so this is why it’s important to document that cats really do need at least three feet of space,” she said. “Imagine not being able to stretch for a week, or two, or three. This is the minimum size we think is functional.”

The outcome of the second phase of the study could protect as many as a million cats a year from respiratory disease.

“We know URI in most shelters is number one or number two reson for euthanasia of cats,” Hurley said. “We know it’s costing shelters a tremendous amount of money. The Association of Shelter Veterinarians listed it as the number one health issue in shelters.”

Hurley acknowledged many shelters think that giving cats twice the space means they won’t be able to save as many cats, but she thinks they’re doing the math wrong.

“Setting the bar where cats have good quality care does not mean shelters can’t save as many cats consistently,” she insisted. “In fact, they may save more. Cats who are too stressed to cope can’t show their true colors, or show if they’re already great candidates for adoption or need some special help.

“Healthier cats can go to to offsite adoption,” she said. “Sick cats can’t. Healthy cats can go to rescue, and rescue groups can move more cats if they aren’t having to take time to nurse the cats, and use up foster care space.

“And as long as the shelter has the capacity for all the cats who are on hold or are waiting to go out to rescue groups, as well as a good selection for adopters, then having fewer cats just means they have more time to spend on the cats they have, and on developing good programs to care for those cats and cats in the community.”

Hurley’s project is one of three Helping Shelters Help Cats studies funded through the Morris Animal Foundation’s Happy Healthy Cat Campaign. An international team from the United States, Canada and Australia is also working to develop effective behavioral interventions to minimize the spread of URI.

The San Francisco SPCA announced today that Jan McHugh-Smith would be leaving her position as director in March of next year and returning to her home state of Colorado to be closer to her family and work for the Humane Society Pikes Peak Region.

Controversy and criticism have plagued McHugh-Smith and the SF/SPCA in recent years. An expensive veterinary hospital — a legacy from her predecessor — as well as the decision to close down the SF/SPCA’s three-decades old hearing dog program without any notice to its longtime staff and clients contributed to a growing narrative in the community that the organization had lost touch with its animal lifesaving mission.

A move to get the SF/SPCA to change course gained momentum in 2008, when a scathing article in the alternative newspaper SF Weekly accused the organization of abandoning its commitment to no-kill — a movement that originated at the shelter when Richard Avanzino was its head.

Called “A Time to Kill,” the article said that a kitten named Tulane and a young dog named Isaac had been killed by the SF/SPCA even though they could have been saved — and that this change was part of a larger picture:

The SF/SPCA has also announced a new protocol for euthanizing sick kittens, which conflicts with the public’s perception that the shelter adheres to no-kill principles.

The reason for the new euthanasia policies is, in part, money. The SF/SPCA is scrambling to find funding to complete its controversial $30 million, for-profit animal hospital, the Leanne B. Roberts Animal Care Center. The project is only half complete, and with the looming specter of hiring staff, new equipment costs, and opening expenses, there has been an emphasis on saving money around the shelter, where it costs an estimated $43 a day to house a healthy cat. Since president Jan McHugh-Smith was hired a year ago, she has scaled back or eliminated internationally known behavior and medical services that had saved thousands of animals over the years.

Employees and volunteers were alarmed at the recent closure of the 30-year-old Hearing Dog Program, along with major changes to adoption policies, cutbacks to the Cat Behavior Program, and the loss of the volunteer Affection Eaters program, which might have been able to help Tulane.

The cutbacks and new policies have caused at least seven staffers to quit, as well as an uncertain number of volunteers. Some of them have organized into two groups who are vowing to expose the new policies even if it means that donors, the lifeblood of the nonprofit, stop cutting checks.

Although McHugh-Smith insisted in an interview with me that the SF/SPCA, and she, remained commited to a no-kill goal, the community wasn’t convinced. A series of contentious Animal Welfare Commission hearings followed, with local rescue groups and the organization FixSanFrancisco.org demanding changes at the shelter.

The changes that came about weren’t what those groups had in mind. The expensive veterinary hospital came online during the current economic downturn, and is currently a million bucks in the red. Hours and staff were cut, and the shelter’s relationship with the high-profile Academy of Dog Trainers was terminated.

Another scathing cover story in another Bay Area alternative weekly, entitled “How the San Francisco SPCA Let Us Down,” alleged that SF/SPCA was sucking in all the donor money but letting the local rescue groups do all the work:

At a January 8, 2009 meeting of the Commission of Animal Control and Welfare (ACW) – which advises the Board of Supervisors regarding animal issues in the City – animal care supervisor Eric Zuercher presented some startling statistics: While the SF/SPCA took 122 dogs from (Animal Care and Control) in 2007-08, independent rescues took far more. Grateful Dogs Rescue, which gets 80 percent of its dogs from ACC, took 141 in 2007, and 146 in just the first three quarters of 2008. Rocket Dog Rescue, which, Zuercher stated deals with the toughest cases (pit bulls, medical issues), took 111. Other groups also stepped in – Muttville takes older dogs, Wonderdog takes a lot of small dogs. The 122 taken by the SF/SPCA represents just 14 percent of the total dogs they took in 2008.

Where cats are concerned, the SF/SPCA fairs better, with 73 percent of its cats coming from ACC in 2008, though that is down from 84 percent in 2007. The percentage of cats taken from other shelters jumped from 16 percent in 2007 to 25 percent in 2008.

Toni’s Kitty Rescue saved 200 kittens in just four months, all of which would have been euthanized otherwise because ACC does not adopt out kittens under eight weeks of age (and the SF/SPCA won’t take them). Lana Bajsel’s Give Me Shelter gets 95 percent of its cats and kittens from ACC – they currently have 100 cats in their system on an $80,000-a-year budget, while the SF/SPCA has just 170. Without the rescues, Zuercher concludes, many more animals would have died.

“We would be so greatly diminished without the rescues,” Zuercher says. “They astound me and inspire me with the amount of effort they put into this.”

With McHugh-Smith’s departure, the Board of the SF/SPCA says they’ll be conducting a national search for a new director. Will real change come — once again — to San Francisco?

Interesting tidbit from the Seattle P-I, courtesy of the AVMA news feed:

Kirkland police were called to a veterinary clinic in the city on Oct. 11 after an employee there reported a theft.

The employee told police a woman identifying herself as Molly Keicko entered the clinic claiming to be traveling from Colorado with her dog, Detective Christa Gilland said in court documents. The woman went on to say she’d left her dog’s pain medication at home and needed a refill due to an injury to the dog’s leg.

After staff at the center examined the dog, “Keicko” was issued a prescription for Tramadol — a painkiller used by humans as well as cats, dogs and most pets — but then fled the clinic after saying she needed to go to her car, Gilland said. Clinic staff contacted police as well as the Washington State Veterinary Medical Association, which issued a scam alert to veterinarians statewide.

“There was an immediate and overwhelming response from clinics within King County stating that they had experienced the same ’scam,’” Gilland said in court documents. “One of the clinics reported that a former employee, Danelle Shay, had been terminated for stealing Tramadol, and she had a dog matching the description of the one seen in Kirkland.”

According to court documents, Gilland found that 16 clinics reported nearly identical incidents involving Shay and her dog, Toomie. Workers at 10 clinics identified Shay from a photo montage, according to court documents.

Pet Connection BFF Dr. Patty K touched on the topic of prescribing meds that have “street value”   in a recent post on Dolittler, by the way.