Pet Food Safety Laws Written for Us Didn’t Matter to Them

Why did FDA, AAFCO and AFIA take away our pet food safety laws?

Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food laws were our laws, promised to pet owners by Congress after thousands of our pets died and thousands more suffered permanent kidney damage in 2007. Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food promised us regulatory authorities would take the necessary steps to ‘ensure’ our pets food was safe, preventing future deadly disasters.

Eleven years later, without warning – our laws were deleted by changes made to an unrelated bill in Congress. The promises given to us in 2007 turned into broken promises in 2018. Who would betray pet owners this way? New information provided to us shows that the FDA, AAFCO and the trade association AFIA lobbied Congress to change a bill to delete our laws.

They didn’t like the promises Congress made to us, they wanted to regulate pet food their way, so they worked to delete our laws.

Timeline:

March 2007 – The deadliest pet food recall in history begins, thousands of pets died – thousands more suffered permanent kidney damage.

September 2007 – Congress wrote Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food laws, requiring FDA to update pet food ingredients to include quality standards, update pet food processing standards and update pet food labels providing pet owners with more nutritional and ingredient information. Congress required FDA to complete this work by September 2009.

Spring 2008 – Government website acknowledges FDA’s requirement to complete Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food pet food updates.

Fall 2009 – The deadline required by Congress for FDA to complete pet food safety updates has arrived. FDA had not completed the work, public notices continued on the government website for several more years (Spring 2010, Fall 2010, Spring 2011, and Fall 2011).

Fall 2013 – FDA continues to post on government website the required work of Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food is in progress.

Fall 2017 – The FDA‘s public notices on the government website change, our pet food safety updates were marked as “Withdrawn“.

January 2018 – Two months after withdrawing the pet food safety requirements, FDA makes a false statement in the Federal Register stating “Updated Standards for Labeling of Pet Food” was “Completed“.

To be clear, there had been NO updated standards for labeling of pet food, this statement from FDA in the Federal Register was false. The information on pet food labels today (in 2021) is close to identical as it was in 2007 when the deadliest pet food recall in history occurred. So, why would FDA make a false statement in the Federal Register (in January 2018)? Why would FDA make a public notice that pet food labeling requirements were “completed” when they knew they were not?

Perhaps FDA thought no one would notice, or perhaps they knew exactly what was about to happen with the help of some friends. One month later…

February 15, 2018 – Senate bill S.2434 was introduced; Animal Drug and Animal Generic Drug User Fee Amendments of 2018. The entire original bill only included language regarding animal drug user fees, there was NO mention of pet food.

February 28, 2018 – Senate bill S.2434 was updated, adding section 306 “Food additives intended for use in animal food” submitted by Senator Rand Paul . This new section included the language to delete our pet food safety laws:

By “striking paragraph (1)” – our pet food safety laws would be deleted. The updated bill passed in the Senate Committee, next it would go to the House of Representatives.

Summer 2018 – Senate bill S.2434 went to the House of Representatives as bill HR 5554. The bill passed into law in July 2018 and signed by the President in August 2018. Our pet food safety laws were deleted, wiped from record. FDA would no longer be required to update pet food ingredient definitions, update pet food processing standards, and update the information required on pet food labels.

We felt there had to be someone behind this devastating blow to pet owners, but who?

Recently we were provided with some Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) acquired emails from documentary film maker and pet food consumer advocate Kohl Harrington (of Pet Fooled and Pet Schooled). These emails told us who that someone was, these emails are evidence that AAFCO, FDA and AFIA worked together (lobbied Congress) to change the language of the bill. The changes that they worked for, deleted our pet food safety laws.

The changes in the bill occurred between February 15, 2018 and March 8, 2018 as evidenced by the original bill and updated bill. During these three weeks – FDA, AAFCO, and AFIA did their damage.

Who was involved?

Dave Edwards – FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine
Sue Hayes – AAFCO Executive Director
Stan Cook – AAFCO President (2018), Missouri Department of Agriculture
Richard Ten Eyck – AAFCO Board of Directors (2018), Oregon Department of Agriculture
Bob Geiger – AAFCO Board of Directors (2018), Office of Indiana State Chemist
Ali Kashani – AAFCO Board of Directors (2018), Washington Department of Agriculture
Ken Bowers – AAFCO Board of Directors (2018), Kansas Department of Agriculture
Leah Wilkinson – Animal Feed Industry Association (AFIA)

Why.

We can’t know for sure, but we can assume…

…Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food required FDA to update and provide the public pet food ingredient information. If our laws were deleted, AAFCO would be able to continue to sell pet food ingredient information to industry and the public. Per AAFCO tax returns, in 2017 AAFCO earned $408,187.00 from sales of pet food definitions (“publication sales“).

…Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food laws required FDA to establish ingredient standards – such as quality standards. As example, corn ingredients in pet food would have had a quality standard to be free from toxic levels of aflatoxin (the cause of many recent pet food recalls). With quality standards, pet food ingredient suppliers would be held to legal safety standards which could result in ramifications IF a supplier did not meet the standard. If our laws were deleted, ingredient suppliers – such as Members of the Animal Feed Industry Association – would NOT be held to quality requirements.

…Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food also required FDA to update pet food labels. A task that would have required a great deal of time and effort from the agency, clearly something FDA just didn’t want to do. If our laws were deleted, FDA didn’t have extra work and things could remain exactly the same.

What they did.

The deletion of our pet food safety laws occurred between February 15, 2018 – when the bill did NOT include any language about pet food and February 28, 2018 – when the bill was ‘marked up’ (the language of the bill changed) to include the deletion of Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food section (a). All of the emails below are within this time frame.

Email from Sue Hays – AAFCO executive director to Stan Cook AAFCO president at the time – dated February 23, 2018:

To explain their discussion…Sue Hays wrote to Stan Cook “I spoke with Dave Edwards.” Dave Edwards is an employee of FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine, he also sits on the AAFCO Board of Directors.

The next sentence, “He got the language from Leah 2 days ago…” As evidence by other emails, “Leah” is Leah Wilkinson of the industry trade association AFIA. Sue Hays tells Stan Cook that FDA (Dave Edwards) ‘got the language’ from a trade association. The “language” they speak of is the language changes that occurred in the bill (deleting our laws).

Fifth paragraph begins with “Dave supports the concept of adopting the OP…” The “OP” is AAFCO’s Official Publication which consists of pet food regulations, nutritional requirements, and legal definitions of ingredients. AAFCO copyright protects and sells the Official Publication for $120.00 a year. By ‘adopting the OP’ – supported by Dave Edwards of FDA – AAFCO is allowed to continue to profit from sales.

Sixth paragraph “The bill will be marked up on the 28th. Dave suggests that any officials that have input contact their Senators about this prior to mark up.” FDA (Dave Edwards) encouraged AAFCO to have state feed officials (state government employees) contact (lobby) their Senators about the language changes in the bill.

Email response from Stan Cook, AAFCO President (at the time) to Sue Hays AAFCO Executive Director dated same day 2/23/2018, included on this email was the AAFCO Board of Directors (in 2018):

In the above email AAFCO confirms they are working with the trade association AFIA (“a draft copy to AFIA for review“). Mr. Cook suggests for AAFCO to communicate (lobby) with the Chair of the Senate Committee that ultimately passed the bill that deleted our pet food safety laws.

Email from Sue Hays to Stan Cook and AAFCO Board of Directors dated 2/24/2018:

Sue Hays agrees that the state government members of AAFCO should lobby Congress. She also mentions that Dave Edwards of FDA suggested AAFCO members should lobby in their own states.

In the email below, Ms. Hays admits she lobbied one Senator as the AAFCO Executive Director, dated 2/27/2018 to the AAFCO Board of Directors:

Dated the same day (2/27/2018) below is an email from Sue Hays to AFIA trade association representative Leah Wilkinson – again evidencing AAFCO’s working with this trade association. The “markup” she speaks of is the language changes that included the deletion of our pet food safety laws. And Ms. Hays asks the trade association for “direction on next steps” that AAFCO should take.

Below is an email from AFIA trade association Leah Wilkinson to Sue Hays AAFCO Executive Director dated 2/28/18:

The final blow came in the above email, “the amendment passed“. The amendment ‘they’ worked for was Section 306 – the section of the bill that deleted our pet food safety laws. Leah Wilkinson of AFIA “thanks” Sue Hays of AAFCO “for your support“; an industry trade association thanks AAFCO for their support to delete our pet food safety laws.

To be fair, Section 306 of S.2434 that FDA, AAFCO and AFIA worked behind the scenes for, also included regulation for FDA’s approval of feed additives. It is understandable that these three organizations would want to provide their opinion to Congress on the approval of feed additives. BUT, there is NO excuse that their lobbied-for language changes deleted our laws. Our laws were in their way, our laws were preventing them from regulating pet food as they wanted.

Evidence that our laws were in their way was provided in a speech FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine Director Dr. Steven Solomon gave to industry in September 2018 just after our laws were deleted :

“Finally, the ingredient standards and definitions provision of the 2007 FDA Amendments Act (FDAAA) was deleted. Enactment of this provision has long challenged the Agency, and its deletion provides an opportunity for us to reaffirm our relationship with AAFCO as a means of developing definitions for ingredients used in animal food.”

And AFIA provides us evidence too, the following is an excerpt of a post from Leah Wilkinson (who worked with AAFCO and FDA in emails above) posted on an industry website in July of 2018:

“Sponsored by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the amendment will, among other things, require F.D.A. to post information on its website on the number of pending petitions it is reviewing and a scientific rationale for why the agency requires additional studies beyond the ones originally submitted by companies. For pet food specifically, it will also strike the conflicting language in the F.D.A. Amendments Act that requires F.D.A. to establish “ingredient standards and definitions with respect to pet food,” due to the uncertainty it creates between F.D.A. and AAFCO.”

Our laws ‘conflicted’ with the way they wanted to regulate pet food. So, they worked together to delete our laws. Unforgivable.

What if…

What if FDA had completed Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food by the required deadline of September 2009, how many pet deaths could have been prevented? If all pet food ingredients were required to have a standard of quality (as was required in Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food), how much safer would pet food be today?

Ingredient quality standards could have prevented euthanized animals and the drug pentobarbital from being used in pet food. Without those laws, more than 90 million pounds of pet food were recalled in two years and an unknown number of pets died.

Ingredient quality standards could have prevented manufacturers from using aflatoxin contaminated corn in pet food. Without those laws, more than 60 million pounds of pet food were recalled in just four months and more than 100 dogs died.

If pet food processing standards would have been updated as required in Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food, the deadly Hill’s excess vitamin D recalls might have been prevented.

Personal opinion: Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food was stolen from us. These emails show that FDA, AAFCO and AFIA worked together to ensure pet food remained as they wanted, not as what Congress wanted and promised us in 2007. Those laws were promised to us, not them. They had no right to take away our laws. Thousands of pets died for those laws, and thousands more have died because Ensuring the Safety of Pet Food was never completed.

Questions will be sent to FDA, AAFCO and AFIA asking them why they lobbied Congress to delete our laws. Pet owners will be provided with their responses, or will be informed if they don’t bother to respond.

Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,

Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
Author Buyer Beware, Co-Author Dinner PAWsible
TruthaboutPetFood.com
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