On March 28, "NBC News" featured California veterinarian Paul Pion, who
surveyed the 30,000 members of his national Veterinary Information Network
and told anchor Tom Costello, "If what veterinarians are suspecting are
cases, then it's much larger than anything we've seen before." Costello
commented that it amounted to "potentially thousands of sick or dead pets."
The FDA was asked about the numbers at a press conference it held on Friday
morning to announce that melamine had been found in the urine and tissues of
some affected animals as well as in the foods they tested. Dr. Stephen
Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine, told reporters that
the FDA couldn't confirm any cases beyond the first few, even though they
had received over 8,800 additional reports, because "we have not had the
luxury of confirming these reports." They would work on that, he said, after
they "make sure all the product is off the shelves." He pointed out that in
human medicine, the job of defining what constitutes a confirmed case would
fall to the Centers for Disease Control, but there is no CDC for animals.
Instead, pet owners were encouraged to report deaths and illness to the FDA.
But when they tried to file reports, there was no place on the agency's Web
site to do so and nothing but endless busy signals when people tried to
call.
Veterinarians didn't fare much better. They were asked to report cases to
their state veterinarian's office, but one feline veterinary blog, vetcetera
http://catmanager.wordpress.com/2007...-states-doing/ ,
which surveyed all official state veterinarian Web sites, found that only
eight had any independent information about the recall, and only 24 even
mentioned it at all. Only one state, Vermont, had a request on their site
for veterinarians to report pets whose illnesses or deaths they suspect are
related to the recall. And as of today, there is no longer a notice that
veterinarians should report suspected cases to their state veterinarians on
the Web site of the American Veterinary Medical Association.
The lack of any notification system was extremely hard on veterinarians,
many of whom first heard about the problem on the news or from their
clients. Professional groups such as the Veterinary Information Network were
crucial in disseminating information about the recall to their members, but
not all vets belong to VIN, and not all vets log on to VIN on the weekend
(the Menu press release, like most corporate or government bad news, was
issued on a Friday).
But however difficult this recall has been for veterinarians, no one has
felt its impact more than the owners of affected dogs and cats. While the
pet media and bloggers continued to push the story, the most powerful force
driving it was the grief of pet owners, many of them fueled by anger because
they felt that their pet's death or illness wasn't being counted. Many of
them were also being driven by a feeling of guilt. At Pet Connection, we
received a flood of stories from owners 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.
For some, the story ended there. But for others, there was one more
horrifying chapter. Because kidney failure causes nausea, it's often hard to
get recovering pets to eat. So a lot of these owners got down on their hands
and knees and coaxed and begged and eventually hand-fed their pets the very
same food that had made them sick. Those animals ended up right back in the
hospital and died, because their loving owners didn't know that the food was
tainted.
To many pet owners, the pet food recall story is a personal tragedy about
the potentially avoidable loss of a beloved dog or cat. Others have a hard
time seeing the story as anything more than that -- with implications beyond
the feelings of those grieving pet owners. Which brings us to the bigger
picture, and questions -- not about what happened but about the system. How
did this problem, now involving almost every large pet food company in the
United States, including some of the most trusted -- and expensive --
brands, get so out of hand? How come pet owners weren't informed more
rapidly about the contaminated pet food? Why is it so hard to get accurate
numbers of affected animals? Why didn't veterinarians get any notification?
Where did the system break down?
The issue may not be that the system broke down, but that there isn't really
a system.
There is, as the FDA pointed out, no veterinary version of the CDC. This
meant the FDA kept confirming a number it had to have known was only the tip
of the iceberg. It prevented veterinarians from having the information they
needed to treat their patients and advise pet owners. It allowed the media
to repeat a misleadingly low number, creating a false sense of security in
pet owners -- and preventing a lot of people from really grasping the scope
and implication of the problem.
And it was why Rosie O'Donnell felt free to comment last week on "The View":
"Fifteen cats and one dog have died, and it's been all over the news. And
you know, since that date, 29 soldiers have died, and we haven't heard much
about them. No. I think that we have the wrong focus in the country. That
when pets are killed in America from some horrific poisoning accident, 16 of
them, it's all over the news and people are like, 'The kitty! It's so sad.'
Twenty-nine sons and daughters killed since that day, it's not newsworthy. I
don't understand."
In fact, Rosie didn't understand. She didn't understand that the same
government she blames for sending America's sons and daughters to die in
Iraq is the government that told her only 15 animals had died, and that the
story was about a pet "poisoning accident" and not a systemic failure of
FEMA-esque proportions.
Think that's going too far? Maybe not. On Sunday night, April 1, Pet
Connection got a report from one of its blog readers, Joy Drawdy, who said
that she had found an import alert buried
http://www.fda.gov/ora/fiars/ora_import_ia9926.html on the FDA Web site.
That alert, issued on Friday, the same day that the FDA held its last press
conference about the recall, identified the Chinese company that is the
source of the contaminated gluten -- gluten that is now known to be sold not
only for use in animal feed, but in human food products, too
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-...uten-sold_b_44
743.html . (The Chinese company
http://www.petconnection.com/blog/20...hina-denies-ro
ll-in-recall/ is now denying that they are responsible, although they are
investigating it.)
Although the FDA said on Friday it has no reason to think the contaminated
gluten found its way into the human food supply, Sundlof told reporters that
it couldn't be ruled out. He also assured us that they would notify the
public as soon as they had any more information -- except, of course, that
they did have more information and didn't give it to us, publishing it
instead as an obscure import alert, found by chance by a concerned pet
owner, which was then spread to the larger media.
All of which begs the question: If a system to report and track had been in
place for animal illness, would this issue have emerged sooner? Even lacking
a reporting and tracking system, if the initial news reports had included,
as so many human stories do, suspected or estimated cases from credible
sources, it's likely this story would have been taken more seriously and not
just by Rosie O'Donnell. It may turn out that our dogs and cats were the
canaries in the coal mine of an enormous system failure -- one that could
have profound impacts on American food manufacturing and safety in the years
to come.
Christie Keith is a contributing editor for Universal Press Syndicate's Pet
Connection and past director of the Pet Care Forum on America Online. She
lives in San Francisco.