The U.S. Food and Drug Administration Does Not Serve Pet Owners Well
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As pet owners know, this year has been fraught with anxiety about the safety of pet food. There have been numerous pet food recalls and some pet owners have had the misfortune of seeing the untimely death of a beloved pet.
Through this chaos, one of the government agencies that is mandated for the safety of food products is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The expectation would be that the FDA would warn people what pet foods are not safe and what pet foods have been deemed safe for pets. It seems that the FDA is not doing this in a timely fashion. Do you know if your pet food is now safe for your pet?
Today is September 24, 2007. If you look at the present FDA page for the latest update on the pet food recall issue, the latest update was July 23, 2007. In my opinion, I do not think that level of attention to the pet food recall issue is acceptable. To have the ‘latest’ update to be two months ago does not serve the pet owners well.
Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster
Tags: u.s. food and drug administration, pet food, security, updates, pet food recall
2 Comments
Craig Robinett
September 25th, 2007
at 2:22pm
It’s not just pet food. The Lettuce and Spinach have had problems leading to illness and death in humans as well. It’s all based on the fact that the Government wants to “play nice” with the rest of the world, therefore the need to lower our standards to accomodate our overseas ‘friends’ is necessary. Stay tuned. There is sure to be more to come!
Jerry Dunham
October 4th, 2007
at 4:04pm
Back when all this broke I started a private national mailing list to keep people I work with in dog rescue updated. We were consistently about 3 days ahead of the public announcements that appeared in the media (when they appeared at all) and way ahead of the FDA. Numerous times during those dark days I heard back from people on the list that they’d receive one of my messages, go check the pantry, and find that they were using a food or treat that was about to be recalled. Several of those times their animals were already acting ill, but in all cases we caught it early enough that no permanent damage was done.
Interestingly, my vet asked early on to be added to my list, and he told me that even his resources through the vet community were way behind mine. Others on my list were forwarding to their vets because the vets were otherwise behind.
This whole year has been disgraceful for the FDA, and not just regarding pet food. At times I think we’d be better off with no FDA, as at least then people would know they’re on their own when it comes to food safety. As it is, people think the federal government is protecting them, and it hasn’t been the case for quite a few years.
It’s time for the FDA to be fixed (and I don’t mean that as a euphemism for “neutered”, as they appear to be that already). Will it happen?