(part 2 of 2 part interview with Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the FDA)

            “I don’t think we’ll have a really good number to indicate how many pets died or were sickened as a result of the (tainted) pet food,” says Dr. Stephen Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine for the FDA. 

            At the various press conferences held by the FDA from the start of the pet food recalls in mid-March , Sundlof said the deaths of only 16 or so animals could be directly linked to tainted food from the Menu Foods facility.  Some blogs and media outlets picked up on him saying only 16 perished. Sundlof says that unfortunately he was misquoted or his statements misinterpreted. In fact, he also stated at those press conferences that he knew many more pets were unfortunately dead, and many more than that sickened, but he did not know how many.

            The FDA still does not know. A part of the problem is that no reporting system exists for pets as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) would maintain for people in a similar emergency. FDA state representatives were accumulating data from owners reporting on their pets. Early on in the recall consumers just couldn’t get through on busy phone lines. Clearly the public responded with concern about their pets.  

            If anyone ever doubts the importance of companion animals as family members, consider this statistic:  Over 18,000 calls have been made to the FDA from mid March through May, that’s twice as many calls as they typically receive in two years, which includes all items from pharmaceuticals to food to medical devices for both pets and for people.

            Sundlof concedes the FDA wasn’t prepared the crisis. He says that one solution is to offer a more suitable, efficient and timely response should a similar emergency occur again. Specifically, he suggests the formation of trained volunteers who would be  ready to pitch in during a crisis. Sundlof, who typically does not offer a political or legislative-related comment adds, “Having a CDC for animals is being discussed quite vigorously and it would be nice if we had that in the future.”

            Another idea is to maintain dedicated toll-free phone lines – which could obviously handle volume. Dial the phone number and consumers will hear a recorded message indicating which, for example, which pet foods - if there are any at the time – which are recalled. Another similar toll free number would offer information on any recalled human foods. Sundlof agrees, “Not everyone has easy Internet access to learn which items are recalled.” Also, if people are unsure, they could call the FDA at the market or pet store from their cell phones, a good idea since some foods recalled this spring remained on shelves, though they should have been removed.

            So, still another idea may be to create a system so scanners at stores would refuse items which are being recalled and prevent them from being purchased. “Actually, this system does exist because Wal-Mart used it,” says Sundlof.  “We thought this was a very good fail-safe mechanism.” However mandating such a fail-safe system would be a legislative issue not something the FDA can force retailers to implement.

            A key problem the FDA had to deal with throughout the months of various recalls were all sorts of erroneous reports which typically began on the Internet, and were often also carried in the mainstream media. One example is the account of acetaminophen (Tylenol) in some foods.  “This was actually detected by a laboratory; I believe a result of consumers sending in pet food samples to check for melamine (melamine combined with cyanuric acid was what tainted the pet foods in the first place),” says Sundlof. “And that lab reported back that acetaminophen was found. The FDA asked for and received samples and found no acetaminophen. Additional labs, including the University of California, Davis could not reproduce the finding. We feel confident there is no acetaminophen.”

            Sundlof concedes it will take months before the FDA has at least some estimate of how many animals succumbed or were sickened as a result of eating the contaminated food. He adds, “No matter what that number turns out to be, there were far too many.”

© Steve Dale, Tribune Media Services