F.D.A. Bids to Regulate Animal Food, Acting After Recall and Deaths

[phesina]

At last!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/26/health/fda-moves-to-regulate-food-for-animals.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131026

This is just a proposal, though. The article says "The proposal is open for public comment for 120 days. If passed, it would regulate ..." But it doesn't say what it would take to get it passed.

[Karen]

I would contact your senator or congressperson and ask him or her if they can weigh in on passing the proposal, or how one would go about supporting passage effectively.

[Lady's Human]

It's largely a bureaucratic exercise.

Once an agency determines that it has the powers to promogulate new rules under current law, it has to post the proposed changes in the Federal Register. Congress need take no action, unless they oppose the regulations. If no action is taken against the new rules, they go in place. Yes, we have become Byzantium, and, frankly surpassed them.

It looks like an expansion of the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) regs that went into place quite a few years ago. Those regs are why you see recalls for food now mostly before anyone gets ill.

As with human food, if the regs are emplaced, you will see a rise in the recall of pet food. This isn't proof that the new regs are failures, rather, they are explicit proof that the regs are working.

[phesina]

Thanks, LH, for the information on just how that works.

Here's hoping this all happens, and we do start seeing pet-food recalls.