I'm a contributing editor for Universal Press Syndicate's Pet Connection, a pet column appearing in over 60 papers nationwide. We've been covering the pet food recall coverage on our blog since the day it was announced. What's been the hardest part of the coverage, for me, is the endless stream of reports from people telling us about losing their animals to kidney failure. Their stories are so agonizingly sad, and their grief so deep. And all of them are struggling with the guilt of knowing the food they were giving their dogs and cats was what killed them.
The worst are the stories of people whose pets became ill with kidney failure, and who took them to the vet. The dogs or cats were hospitalized and treated, often at great expense - sometimes into the thousands of dollars - and then, when they were finally well enough, sent home - where those same owners often knelt on the floor next to them, begging and coaxing them to eat and get well. Not knowing it was that very food that made them sick in the first place. And then seeing those animals get sick again - and die. Because it was the food, and no one knew. These stories, and we've had more than a few, are giving me nightmares.
Of course, depending on when this happened, someone DID know. No matter how I play the timeline, there were at least a few weeks after Menu saw large numbers of their test animals sick or dead with kidney failure before they announced the recall. Maybe that period was longer. Maybe my understanding of the timeline is wrong. Hopefully this is a question that will be asked by someone who actually has the ability to get an answer. Like a really mean lawyer.
My personal response to crisis is typically to act in some way. I usually write about it (no surprise there), and also focus on what can be done to fix the problem in the short term, and prevent it from happening again in the long term.
So I read with great interest the indictment of our current non-system for reporting large scale animal health disasters posted by catmanager at vetcetera today.
My wife (a veterinarian in an exclusive feline practice) spoke with an AP reporter yesterday about the food recall. One question the reporter asked was whether the state veterinarians had asked local veterinarians to send in data on pets affected by the recall. Oregon’s state veterinarian has been collecting data in his state and released numbers earlier this week.
The reporter’s question got catmanager wondering about how the state veterinarians and state veterinary medical associations had responded to the pet food recall.
What I discovered was disappointing and might go a long way toward explaining why it’s been so hard to get official numbers: almost none of the states seem to want to collect the information (or if they do, they’re making it darned difficult to find out how and to whom to report data).
So even though we're telling pet owners to make sure their vets report their pets' illnesses to their state veterinarian's office and the FDA, there really is no mechanism to facilitate that process. One commentor at PetConnection.com said he asked his vet to report his pet's illness, and the vet looked at him blankly and said it was up to him to do that. Huh?
DVM Newsmagazine somewhat presciently wrote on February 1:
Veterinarians are falling short of their original mandate to be guardians of the nation's food supply, and that could pose a security risk in the event of a major food-animal emergency, a recent study shows.
Released by the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges and the American Veterinary Medical Association, the study evaluated the need of veterinary medicine to take greater responsibility for the animal food supply system, one of the founding duties of the profession.
Because not enough veterinarians are available within state and federal agencies or in rural community practices to respond to major animal-health emergencies, there is a security risk to the modern food system, the study indicates.
I don't think this is actually the fault of veterinarians, though. Most of the vets I have spoken to - and I have spoken to dozens - didn't even know about the recall until you and I did. No one contacted them, including all the sales reps usually so eager to get in touch with their latest press release or product sample. Professional groups such as the Veterinary Information Network were critical in disseminating information about the recall to their members, but not all vets belong to VIN, and not all vets log onto VIN on the weekend (the Menu press release was dumped on a Friday afternoon, of course).
So while we at PetConnection constantly urged people to contact their vets and report to the FDA, there was no system in place to actually allow them to do that. Their vets often didn't know any more than they did about the recall itself (although they were and are the ones to talk to about their pet's health risk from consuming the food), and as for reporting to the FDA, good luck. There was nowhere online to report, and the FDA said itself it had well over 4000 phone calls from pet owners to return - although it hadn't done so yet, and those were only the ones who got through. I never got anything but a busy signal when trying to call. And now we're also urging them to have their vets contact their state veterinarian, and it looks like in many states, that's not necessarily easy to do.
So, while some people are suggesting the system is broken, I think it's worse. I don't think there is a system.
We should fix that.