Nathan Winograd – the voice of America’s displaced pets – says that the PURR Act will lead to more sick and dead animals as it will weaken oversight. He reports that there “have been 3,691 FDA pet product recalls,” and “the vast majority — 68% — were pet food related.”
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In some instances, hundreds of animals have been poisoned by poor commercially prepared food and many have died. He believes that the pet food manufacturers need to be better regulated to improve quality and yet he says that “Congress is considering legislation to weaken oversight.”
PURR will put the regulation of ingredient and label approval in the hands of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). At the moment individual states regulate ingredient and label approval.
The alternative viewpoint to that stated by Winograd comes from the politicians who’ve co-sponsored the bill: Representatives Jake LaTurner (R-Kan.), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Sharice Davids (D-Kan.), Josh Harder (D-Calif.) and Steve Womack (R-Ark.).
They say:
Pet food makers produce nearly 10 million tons of food annually and are crucial to American agriculture. Costly and outdated regulations have made it difficult for pet food manufacturers nationwide to invest in research and development for new and improved products. I [LaTurner] am proud to introduce the bipartisan PURR Act to eliminate red tape and allow pet food makers to deliver the best nutritional outcomes for our dogs and cats.
And Womack said:
Pet food manufacturers deal with a confusing, costly and conflicting dual regulatory system that hasn’t been updated in nearly 100 years. The PURR Act would streamline the outdated system by granting sole authority to the FDA to regulate the labeling and marketing of pet food while eliminating the state-by-state regulatory patchwork.
The bill will centralise oversight and therefore streamline it by giving the FDA regulatory authority over the labeling and ingredient review process for dog and cat food and treats.
What do you think? I believe that pet food manufacturers can do better. Heck, manufacturers of food for humans can do better too. In the UK a recent study found that ultra-processed foods which are very popular can and often do cause an early death! They found diabetes and heart disease linked to these products.
Cat and dog food is also ultra-processed. One vet believes that the increase in feline diabetes is caused by dry cat food. Too much carbohydrates in the stuff. It disrupts the natural working of insulin production and acceptance by the body.
I am digressing slightly but stricter standards are needed. Winograd believes that PURR will lead to less strict standards.
I don’t know the reasoning behind Winograd’s belief that the FDA will do a worse job than the individual states in regulating ingredient and labels. But perhaps it is because a big federal organisation is less nimble and more prone to bureaucracy and bloat that smaller organisations. It may be too passive being reliant on reports about defects in ingredients for example.
Susan Thixton of Truth About Pet Food said:
The Pet Food Institute’s PURR Act is a bill that solely benefits industry, not one word of it benefits pet owners (even though they claim it does). In short, the PURR Act would remove the regulation of pet food on a state level, the bill proposes that FDA have sole responsibility to regulate pet food.
Thixton
It contains the words:
No State or a political subdivision of a State may directly or indirectly establish, maintain, implement, or enforce any authority or requirement relating to the marketing or labeling of pet food.
She claims that the bill benefits the pet food industry and I presume therefore is designed to benefit big business but at the expense of protecing pets.
She adds that the The Pet Food Institute is marketing the new law as benefiting the consumer. She claims that this is misleading.
She’d like pet food to be regulated like human food. Note: in the UK human food can be deadly! See above. But she said that pet food is reduced to “mainly feed grade product without disclosure of feed grade to pet food consumers.”
Well, I trust both Winograd and Thixton to provide the truth. I don’t trust pet food manufacturers to have the health and welfare of pets as their first priority.
The post is meant to flag up this change to pet owners across the United States.
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