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Pet Owners Organize to Put Congress on a Short Leash

Nationwide Series of Memorial Marches for Dead Pets

By Mark Huffman
ConsumerAffairs.com

April 15, 2007

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The facts are simple. In March Canadian pet food manufacturer Menu Foods announced that a contaminated ingredient in some of its dog and cat food made the products potentially lethal to their intended customers. A recall of several brands began.

But the consequences of this incident are far from simple. For thousands of pet owners, they're intensely personal. Because of that contamination, and the lag time before the tainted products were removed from shore shelves, a beloved member of the family is dead or seriously injured.

"We lost our three-year-old cat, Timber on Nov 17, 2006 due to liver failure," said Jen Hoeflein, of Bastrop, Texas. "He was consuming Hill Country Fare's canned cat food on a regular basis. He rapidly became ill and in horror, our family watched him slip into a near-death stage. As soon as the vet's office opened the next morning, he was put to sleep to end his suffering."

Hoeflein responded by forming a group called Pets Need a Voice Too, or PNV2. She says she was determined that the tragedy that befell her family would go no further. She led efforts to organize a nationwide memorial march for April 28, to memorialize pets who died and to call attention to what she sees as an outrageous situation.

"It's a complete outrage that Timber's suffering was mirrored all over the country, different animals, different families with the outcome the same. And still, the tainted food sat on the store shelves. In fact, some of it is still there. That's simply appalling," she told ConsumerAffairs.com.

Hoeflein describes her group, PNV2, as being in its infant stage, but representing a collective group of average citizens directly affected by the tainted pet food event either through the loss of a beloved pet, the illness of a pet or the overall concern for the quality of products purchased with a blinding degree of faith by consumers. But make no mistake, she intends to bring about some changes.

"I think Americans have forgotten how powerful their individual voices are when it comes to protecting their families and in many American households, pets are considered members of their families," Hoeflein said. "This event has created a passion-driven response, an outcry for accountability and the demand for the meeting of product quality standards."

After her pet's death, Hoeflein said she began working the Internet, networking with others who had similar experiences. As people began sharing their frustration and pain, suggestions of a day of tribute began to surface, she says.

"It just snowballed after that. I made a modest free website that soon became overwhelmed with traffic as word of the Memorial March spread," Hoeflein said. "We made the investment to purchase a website simply because people were coming to us for information and updates on what quickly had become a large movement on the part of citizens in response to the their personal losses."

The April 28 march will take place in Boston; Reno, Nevada; San Diego; Orange County, California; Uniontown, Pennsylvania; Portland, Maine; and Jacksonville, Oregon, with efforts pending in dozens of other cities.

"The March is a direct response from people all over the country and Canada who felt an overwhelming need to speak in outrage over the lack of safety standards in regard to pet food and the corporate negligence in allowing the food to remain on the shelves prior to the recall," Hoeflein said.

The March is just the first step in what Hoeflein and other pet owners and activists hope will be a campaign to ensure protection of pets. The long-range objective is a network of committed pet owners who will keep pressure on lawmakers and government agencies to make sure tainted ingredients never again make their way into the food supply.

"We want people to understand, we are simply giving a voice to sadness and pain, to frustration and outrage," Hoeflein said. "People need that and our pets deserve that. Hopefully, that voice will result in better days for pets and owners alike."

Thousands of Deaths

ConsumerAffairs.com has talked to scores of grieving pet owners and received hundreds of written complaints. The Web site Petconnection.com, says it's received 4,069 reports of deceased pets in the wake of the recall. Of that number, 2,099 are cats and 1,970 are dogs.

The Web site also says it's received 12,663 reports of illnesses linked to the recalled pet food, which the FDA says is contaminated with melamine-tainted wheat gluten.

"These are self-reported numbers, and should be in no way be considered confirmed or 'official,'" the Web site states. "But if even a fraction can be confirmed, they show deaths far exceeding the FDA's count of 16 pets, most of whom died in a manufacturers feeding trial."

Last week, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) chaired a special Senate hearing about the pet food recall debacle, hearing mostly from FDA representatives and pet food lobbyists, while the FDA warned that some recalled pet food may

"Many cats, dogs and other pets, considered members of the family, are now suffering as a result of a deeply flawed pet food inspection system," Durbin said during Thursday's hearing. "The FDA's response to this situation has been wholly inadequate -- we need to establish standardized inspections, impose penalties on companies who delay reporting health problems and increase communication between the FDA and the state inspectors so that we can catch problems more quickly. These sound like basic steps but the FDA has failed to put them in place."

Durbin's remarks highlighted the many flaws in the pet food industry's patchwork inspection system, which is not all that different from the haphazard, industry-dominated, system that supposedly protects humans.

FDA Inspections

To begin with, the FDA has only inspected about 30 percent of all pet food plants since 2004, said Stephen Sundlof, director of the agency's Center for Veterinary Medicine. He said many of those visits occurred after recalls had been put in place or during the Mad Cow scare.

The FDA had never inspected the Menu Foods facility in Emporia, Kan., where many of the recalled products were made, until after the company reported a problem.

Eric Nelson, president of the American Association of Feed Control Officers (AAFCO), said few inspections are required because the industry, with help from the AAFCO, regulates itself well.

After the lengthy hearing, Senator Durbin told ConsumerAffairs.com he is working on legislation that will address these problems, but he did not specify the scope of his pending legislation.

Industry Response

In related news, The Pet Food Institute (PFI), which represents pet food manufacturers, announced Thursday the formation of the National Pet Food Commission to strengthen industry procedures and safeguards.

The commission includes nationally-recognized veterinarians, toxicologists, state and federal regulators and nutritionists, and will have two main goals:

• To investigate the cause of the current pet food recall;

• To recommend steps the industry and government should take to build on safety and quality standards already in place.

The commission will report its findings and offer recommendations to the industry and regulators at the end of its investigation. PFI President Duane Ekedahl said the commission will "augment the FDA's work and make recommendations so that consumers continue to be confident in the food they feed their pets."

"The people who make pet food are pet lovers and owners themselves. They understand the concerns consumers have about pet food products and feel a special responsibility to address this issue," he said.

Dr. Angele Thompson -- an expert in nutritional biochemistry and a member of the American Academy of Veterinary Nutrition -- will chair the commission.

"It is imperative that we study this problem from all sides and apply lessons learned to further build on industry procedures and safeguards," she said.

In other news, the Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians--in consultation with the FDA--is trying to compile specific data on the number of cats and dogs that have died after eating the melamine-tainted wheat gluten.

The AAVLD Veterinary Analytical Toxicology Committee launched a survey on April 6, to gather data on cases that meet certain criteria for possible pet food-induced nephrotoxicosis.

These cases should meet two of the following criteria:

(1) known exposure to one of the recalled pet foods,
(2) histologic lesions consistent with crystal-induced tubular nephrosis (pictures are posted on the AAVLD Web site),
(3) urinalysis with crystals (also posted on the site), and
(4) chemical confirmation of the presence of melamine or other marker chemicals in pet food, tissues, or urine.

The organization is asking AAVLD laboratories, along with other laboratories and private practitioners who wish to participate, to report incidents in the United States and Canada, using the survey tool on its Web site: www.aavld.org. Nonmembers can enter case data via the public area by clicking on News and then on AAVLD Pet Food Toxicity Survey.

The data will be available to the FDA for its investigations.

More about the Pet Food Recall ...

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