Dramatic Shift

Thank you Susan and Mollie, for your courage and tenacity to relentlessly pursue the issue of pet food safety. Keep up the great work! It is so needed!

I’m so thrilled to hear about this! Amazing. Thank you so much for your continued efforts. Because of you I was able to teach a veterinarian about my dog’s illness due to Chinese chicken jerky a few years ago. He was completely out of the loop with the news of pets getting sick and dying. Go figure, right?

I can’t wait to see how far your influence will go!

Thank you so much Susan for helping us and our doggies!

Thank you Susan and Mollie!!! I’ve been following you since you started and it’s been such an uphill battle but you guys never give up. You give us all hope. Thank you a million times and then some! Sandy and Libby

So happy to hear this news… it bought tears to my eyes. Congratulations!

Congratulations, this is wonderful news. Thank you for all that you do.

Congratulations! A hard fought battle but well worth it for you and all of us and our beloved pets!

susan,
YOU! did it! wonderful news

What a great milestone!

Take a moment to let it sink in, to be proud, to run a victory lap around your neighborhood.

Congrats & many thanks!!! Maybe you can get down to the bottom why my cats turn up their noses at canned cat food? Most of them… What the heck is in it? Surely nothing good & tasty to eat. They usually like the gravy though.

Way to go!
But—- I am concerned also. I just heard the announcement on the news. Very vague… FDA wants petfood to be safe…does that mean no more downer cows, drug euthanised rendered animals…
I just don’t trust the FDA…..

Susan and Mollie,

Thank you very much for working for our beloved animals at all times.
We are supporting your activities from the opposite side of the globe.

I have already translated this posting on great shift into Japanese on my website, Truth about Pet Food. jp.

Mollie, Thank you very much for supporting Susan there.

The FSMA has major issues when it comes to small and/or organic farmers. The proposed regulations are burdensome and will either push up the cost of food from small farmers or push them out of business – these are the ones who are now reliable and producing nutritious food.

See this link from Organic Gardening magazine: http://writetofarm.com/2013/10/02/fsma-rules-unfair-to-farmers-bad-for-public-health/

I fear the same will happen with the pet food industry. The small respectable companies will face costly regulation while the larger producers will once again find unpalatable ways around the rules, such as chemical or irradiated methods of “sterilization” to remove the offending bacteria. Remember that this “safety” update for pet food is driven more because people may become sick handling the pet food rather than the animals. From the NYT: “The regulation would help prevent food-borne illness in both animals and people, officials at the agency said, as people can become sick from handling contaminated animal food and from touching pets that have eaten it.” Great, now we’re supposed to be worried about touching our pets?

I admit that I haven’t read the entire proposal yet, but it seems to not address the issue of chemical contamination (the reason for the Great Pet Food Recall of 2007) and it absolutely fails to address antibiotics in feed. Again from the NYT: “The proposal does not address the use of antibiotics given to animals, sometimes in feed. Public health advocates warn that the practice is contributing to dangerous levels of antibiotic resistance in humans.” There also seems to be very little about supply source documentation. Remember that “US sourced” can mean bought from a US distributor who imported the raw ingredients – a favorite word game played by the big manufacturers.

While the invite to the conference call will provide pet food advocates with some input and should be celebrated, I remain skeptical that much will come of it. This is simply a case of “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”.

Just finished a quick scan of the draft of the proposed new rules. A few immediate concerns stand out:

1) There are several areas of proposed rule changes that differ from the standards in place for human food chain safety, such as a requirement that foods be handled in a way that removes or greatly minimizes the potential for allergen cross-contamination. Seems like this is as just as — or moreso — important for pets as humans, and differences like these should be identified, scrutinized and minimized. If this is too much of a burden for farm animal feed, create a separate rule (or set of rules) for dog & cat foods (see 3, below);

2) The rules appear to be very carefully worded to exclude any new requirement that IMPORTERS of food from offshore hold responsibility to ensure that he facility with which they contract offshore has food safety, inspection, hazard control, and record-keeping in place. The FDA cannot regulate those FOREIGN entities, but the IMPORTERS can require their suppliers to comply contractually, and the FDA can require the IMPORTERS to do so;

3) These rules still (ridiculously) lump domestic dog & cat food together with farm, ranch and other animal feed. This may be a good chance to nudge strongly toward a standard specific to domestic pet foods.

(more as I read.)