The plan sounds reasonable... but is it feasable?  How will it factor in the petfood manufacturers themselves?

Some updated info I received from Walter Osborne with FDA.  Many of us sent our comments directly to him at FDA for the pet food safety meeting when their docket system wasnt working in January.  So for those who sent their comments to Mr Osborne early on, it sounds like those are OK, anything as of now sounds like it needs to be sent thru the docket system.  If people sent comments directly to anyone other than Mr Osborne, you might want to resubmit those just to be sure, ....This is his info to me today:

There is no need to resubmit comments to the Docket.  The Federal Register notice announcing the public meeting was the first official announcement about submitting comments; the earlier notice (for which I was the contact) announced FDA's intent to hold the public meeting and noted that comments would be accepted and they have been.
 
The changes to our Dockets system are not a result of FDA's changes; they are government-wide and FDA had no control over the system nor the inability to meet the January 15, 2008, date for complete migration of all the data from the old system to the new one.  But the migration of data was completed in early April.
 
Over the course of the past several months, I have received about 90 comments; these have all been forwarded to Dockets for inclusion in the Public Docket for this initiative.  If you do not see your particular comment(s), it may not have been scanned into the electronic (on-line) version of the Docket, but all comments are included in the hard-copy file located in the Public Reading Room at Dockets and all comments will be reviewed as part of the initiative for pet food standards, etc., as we move forward.  If you would like more information about the Dockets procedures, you may call the Reading Room at 301-827-6860.
 
Walt Osborne

I got notification of additions to the docket this morning. I sincerely hope my repeated attempts didn't result in the same one entered more than once & hope that Arlo's is part of that too. It does appear that all on the update I got this morning are organizations or businesses.

This is only part of the updates:

DOCUMENT ID:    FDA-2007-N-0442-0040
DOCUMENT TYPE:  PUBLIC SUBMISSIONS
POSTED DATE:    05/14/2008
DOCUMENT TITLE: Defend Our Pets - Comment


DOCUMENT ID:    FDA-2007-N-0442-0041
DOCUMENT TYPE:  PUBLIC SUBMISSIONS
POSTED DATE:    05/14/2008
DOCUMENT TITLE: Pet Owners Network - Comment


DOCUMENT ID:    FDA-2007-N-0442-0042
DOCUMENT TYPE:  PUBLIC SUBMISSIONS
POSTED DATE:    05/14/2008
DOCUMENT TITLE: Pet Owners Network.org - Comment


DOCUMENT ID:    FDA-2007-N-0442-0042.1
DOCUMENT TYPE:  PUBLIC SUBMISSIONS
POSTED DATE:    05/14/2008
DOCUMENT TITLE: Pet Owners Network.org - Comment

OK Everyone,

Just got off the phone with Urnestine Ezzard (a nice guy).  He works for Dockets Management Division and is the contact for the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine.

He said to get your comments posted at regulations.gov you must:

1.  Write at the top of your comment:  PLEASE POST TO REGULATIONS.GOV

2.  In your comment, do not include personal information such as your telephone no., address, email address.  (due to privacy concerns)

3.  Try the above, and if your comment doesn't get posted call Urnestine at 301/827-6863

Here's the link again:

http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocketDetail&d=FDA-2007-N-0442

Any problems with these directions, please let me know.

5CatMom
₌^..^₌

I don't know the name of the lab off the top of my head, but I can find out -- they're the same people who do the vast majority of our testing, including the pet body burden tests that launched the pets campaign. What we test for will depend a lot on how much money we can raise, since the cost of tests varies so widely -- it costs $50 or $100 to test a sample for fluoride (from bone meal, linked to cancer), but $1000 to test a sample for PFCs (likely from that grease-resistant bag lining, also linked to cancer). And those are just the lab costs -- we also have to be able to pay our scientists to crunch the numbers & what have you.

Carol,

Had to get him limbered up a bit, but he came around and was very helpful.

Hope everyone will let me know how it goes.  I'll be happy to make more phone calls, if necessary.

5Cat RELENTLESS Mom

₌^..^₌

Don't overlook the obvious.  That is, contaminates that have been problems in the past:

Excess Vit D
Mycotoxins

Fot those of you who've had problems with food - you fed it and your cat quickly became ill - you might do some research on excessive amounts of Vit D, and let us know what you think.

5CatMom
₌ ^..^₌