pet connection

NPR calls them “driveway moments” — those pieces you have to hear the end of so you stay in the car even after you get home and keep listening. Usually this is because the piece is especially interesting or compelling, but in the case of the interview with the new FDA boss, I stayed in my car just hoping she’d say something, anything with some substance.

It was not to be.

The interview had been teased with a mention of the pet-food recall, which NPR characterized as having “sickened” pets, which is true only if you grant that most organisms “sicken” before, you know, actually dying, which is what thousands of pets did, NPR’s glossing over aside.

New FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg batted away the question about the pet-food recall’s core issue — the fraudulent substitution of melamine by foreign companies in order to game the protein readings — by acknowledging the challenges the agency faces with globalization and her intent to modernize.

To be fair, Dr. Hamburg has a good reputation and she just started the job. And of course, this is just one interview. But frankly, I would have liked to have seen a little more  determination, a little more acknowledgment that the FDA as it exists today is a shadow of the consumer-protection firebrand it once was — if not an outright servant of the industries it’s supposed to regulate — and how she was going to change that.

After all, we know tobacco kills, and that shouldn’t be news to the anyone including the FDA, which just got handed the task of regulating tobacco products. What we shouldn’t have to worry about killing us or our pets is the food we buy.

Here’s the interview.

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Dr. Marion Nestle always stresses what we have said on this blog from the first day of the pet-food recall: This isn’t about “pet food” vs. “people food”: It’s about safe food, and it all comes from the same places.

On her “Food Politics” blog, Dr. Nestle talks about the problems with multi-nutrient supplements:

It’s hard not to think of multivitamin supplements (which also include minerals) as perfectly safe, since the amounts of specific nutrients rarely exceed recommended levels.  But according to recent reports, formulation mistakes get made and these don’t always get caught by quality controls.  Here are two examples.

According to FoodProductionDaily.com, 25% of Adverse Event Reports (AERs) sent into the FDA last year concerned multivitamin supplements. This, says one supplement trade association, should not be interpreted to mean that there is anything wrong with the supplements.  Maybe not, but how about checking?

She then puts these findings in context of the recent recalls of Nutro. More here.

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Finally and also food-related, Pet Connection BFF Dr. Patty Khuy writes about prescription pet diets on her Dolittler blog:

The concept of a “prescription only” diet has merely been a marketing success for pet food companies who label their products as such and somehow manage to have engendered a belief that a product labeled as a “Prescription Diet”… requires a prescription.

But this is NOT TRUE! There is no legal basis for requiring a prescription for a product that is NOT regulated by the FDA as a drug. Shall I repeat that or was it sufficiently clear?

Nonetheless, it IS true that any private retail establishment has the right to require a veterinarian’s say-so before you can buy ANYTHING from them. Sure, PetSmart is not about to require a written script for leashes and kitty litter, but if it wants to do business with pet food behemoths like Hills and Iams, then they’re darn well not going to tick them off by failing to follow manufacturer requirements for sale of Prescription Diets.

More here.

No seriously. Best. Horse. Video. Ever. Via Towleroad:

The ABC New show “Nightline” took page from the BBC’s “Pedigree Dogs Exposed” and looked at the problems of quality-of-life issues in exaggerated breed features and the high rates of cancer and other deadly serious health issues in purebred dogs.

It was a good, fair look at some serious issues, although I doubt the AKC and its acolytes feel the same.  As in the U.K., they will surely lash out (and did even before it aired) at the report as an attack on all breeding by the animal-rights loons who want all domestic animals extinct. It’s the old “if you’re not with us you’re agin’ us” crap that keeps a bad situation entrenched.

The PETA loons have nothing to do with this — and even if, yes, they have more than shown they would gladly bury the AKC and all purebred dogs along with the 90 percent of pets they kill in their own shop.  But this fight is coming from those of us who are sick of burying great dogs dead of cancer at 3, 6 and 8 instead of 12, 14 and even 16.  And at  looking at dogs who can’t breathe, walk or reproduce normally.  (More on this from Terrierman, who is featured in the piece. Heaven knows he’s a sekrit PETA operative!)

It’s time to open these registries and get some fresh genetic material into the business of purebred dogs. And into the dogs as well. Open the registries to well-planned, scientifically sound outcrosses. You will still have your breeds as you like them, just healthier.

Open your mind, and open the registries. Get on board with managed outcrosses and save your dogs.

Watch the clip, here:

Because it’s “just” pets or “just us silly pet people,” much of the mainstream media — and note that as a syndicated newspaper columnist, I’m in the club — don’t bother to apply the rules of critical thinking when it comes to animals. We cotton-headed animal lovers don’t deserve it, it seems.

“Pet news?” It’s just Paris Hilton’s Chihuahuas, dog “fashions,” kittens trapped in a sewers and PETA’s ever-more-crazy “look at us … here, but not there“  pronouncements (sure sign of an organization sensing sea change and desperately trying to cope, don’t you think?). We saw this lack of interest, this “it’s just pets” approach during the pet food recall, with a couple of notable exceptions — USA Today’s Elizabeth Weise and, interestingly enough, the Pulitzer-prize winner Abigail Goldman of the L.A. Times.

These folks got it.  What it meant to the thousands of people whose pets died from tainted ingredients, and what China’s rogue capitalism means to everyone. 

The people at the L.A. Times “Unleashed” blog don’ see the picture, small or big. And they don’t even try. Why should they? It’s “just animals,” so let’s pander to the cotton-heads people who love pets are presumed to be.

I’m going to flip this to Luisa at Lassie Get Help. She nails it:

How the mighty have fallen! [Shut up, S. J. Perelman.] The Los Angeles Times used to be a splendid, not merely solvent but proud and prize-winning newspaper with money to burn and a worldwide staff of excellent reporters. Today the paper is a wan tabloid on the edge of bankruptcy. Most of the journalists are gone. Drifting in their wake: a shuffle of press-release collectors, some of whom love love love animals. Their blog at the Times is called L.A. Unleashed, and it’s so horrbly, painfully bad that I could beat my head on rocks.

Unleashed operates like this: Post a press release. Count comments. Repeat. “What do you think — is PETA right on or out of line?” I know fourteen-year-olds who can track down facts and ask sharper questions than these people. Blogging doesn’t relieve you of the responsibility to be honest and knowledgeable about a subject. Blogging means you should be more honest and more knowledgeable.

Is Unleashed the worst blog on earth? It’s quite possibly the worst blog published under the aegis of a major newspaper, or what used to be a major newspaper. I suspect the bloggers are paid per comment and poked with sharp sticks for attempting what reporters in the old days called “research.” They are that fact-averse.

Read the rest.

More good stuff, elsewhere: Therese at the PetsitUSA blog tries to unravel the story behind another killer pet food. And it ain’t easy. Therese is a better journalist than all the bloggers at L.A. Unleashed combined.

Every animal-advocacy group in the country put out a media release yesterday asking the new president to address the issue most critical to our nation’s very survival:

What kind of dog the first family should get.

For the record, I hope the Obamas get a nice little shelter dog, maybe some kind of mopsy, fuzzy-faced terrier mix. An adult, not a puppy, because a well-chosen adult dog often fits in better and more quickly into busy households, especially those with little dog experience.

Yes, it would be a good thing and a good example. But honestly? I don’t much care beyond that they get a nice dog who fits with their family and brings joy to their lives.

See, the Obamas choice of a family pet ranks about 1,074,037th on my list of things that it’s important for President Obama to be thinking about.

In my own Top 10? Along with the economy, the wars, healthcare and energy independence, I would put food.

Food.

Food.

and then, Food.

To say we are vulnerable to terrorist attack though our food supply is to state the absolute obvious. We don’t even need to have people want to hurt us: It’s already happening, just because of corporate greed, corruption in China and shoddy work from a government that’s supposed to protect us, not industry profits.

Melamine. In pet food, livestock feed, infant formula and heaven know what else. Salmonella, from the over-industrialized food system. Antibiotic resistance, from factory farming.

These issues are so much more important to me than getting the politically correct dog for the adorable Obama daughters.

I’m disappointed with the animal advocacy groups . With the lone exception of the Animal Poison Control Center of the ASPCA (hat tip to the courageous Dr. Steve Hansen of the APCC), they were mostly silent during the pet-food recall and they remain so on the issue of food safety still. A safe food supply effects us all, pets included, and I would hope to see some of them step up and say so.

So let’s all enjoy the photo op moment of the Obamas getting their family dog. And then, let’s move on to something that really matters.