If the crisis of the dog food contamination was a warning model, every American has cause for concern. Imported ingredients for pet food were contaminated and pets were dying from the eating the food given to them. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) kept insisting that the number of reported pet deaths were in the teens. This was not true. It was far from the truth. The reports of pet deaths just from people reading this space numbered well over the teens number that the FDA was reporting. Veterinarians thought that the number was a gross under-estimation. It turns out that the number was in the thousands. The FDA cannot determine what the exact number was nor will it venture an estimation.

The FDA was not able to protect pets adequately.

Again, the FDA is under scrutiny. The blood thinning medication, heparin, has been reported as contaminated. Imported heparin from China may be contaminated with oversulfated chondroitin sulfate. Deaths and injuries have been reported.

Imported drug supplies are at risk if there are not enough government inspection. This inspection should be at least two fold. It should be inspected at the points of entry into the country. Safeguards need to be placed so that contaminated products - whether contaminated accidentally or intentionally - do not enter into the supply chain. Further, there should be international agreements so that the foreign manufacturing facilities are subject to inspection and regulation.

There are certainly other precautions that need to be taken. However, these two regulatory steps are basic. Americans outsourced part of the pet food needs and thousands of household pets died. It was a heavy price for the saving that foreign outsourcing provided. People using heparin have died. This is enough. The danger should be clear by now.

Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/

Tags: security, contamination, pet food, food and drug administration, outsourcing, medication, heparin