Vital Animal News: April 28, 2024
Action time: Help Kick the FDA's butt on toxic pet food!
FDA Owned by Big Pet Food
The Cost of Whistleblowing
Stopping Apoquel
Tasty Tips: Wounds
Along the Natural Path
FDA Surrenders on Dog Food Poisonings
This latest news from Susan Thixton of Truth About Pet Food shines a light on what appears to be another example of industry controlling its watchdogs.
In this case, it’s the FDA and it’s subagency, the CVM (Center for Veterinary Medicine) being owned by the likes of Purina et al, i.e. Big Pet Food.
For the first time in history, the FDA has maintained silence in the face of significant numbers of sick pets and people and many deaths of pets.
As Susan points out, close to 5 months have passed since these reports have been flooding social media and reported many times to the CVM directly.
They’ve even failed to respond to FOIA requests for more information.
Bringing in Legal Action
The next step is underway, called a Citizen’s Petition.
A Citizen Petition is a legal process for individuals or industry to request the FDA to take action, refrain from taking action, and/or request the agency to make changes to policy. Citizen Petitions are required to follow a specific format, are published publicly on the Regulations.gov website, and the agency is legally required to provide a response within 120 days.”
In it, Susan and co-authors cite multiple less serious incidents that the FDA has jumped on and intervened in.
The classic one was the 2018 scandal trying to associate “grain free” and “boutique” pet foods with heart failure in dogs. It turns out to have been initiated by Big Pet Food shills, including, believe it or not, some board certified vets working on behalf of Hill’s Pet Food. There’s a lawsuit underway on that one.
A Smoking Gun?
It appears this subject is trying to be buried, literally, by the guilty parties. As in landfills:
Reported by pet owners in Illinois, several truck loads of pet food were disposed of in a rural landfill adjacent to a wildlife preserve. Within days of the dumping, pet owners reported (and documented) 17 dead coyotes in the adjacent wildlife preserve.
A Serious Call to Action
In yet another sign of this being an exceptional case,
Typically the Regulations.gov website provides the opportunity for public comments on Citizen Petitions. For unknown reasons, our Citizen Petition does not provide opportunity for pet owners to provide comment.”
Big Pet Food would really, really like this to just go quietly away. The recalls and the tarnishing of their “profits before pet health” stance would be a huge, costly black eye.
But, you can help get the FDA’s attention and action by emailing the FDA directly as a means to comment on this petition. See Susan’s article first, so you’re fully informed and then email them at:
That link should both open a new email in your email app and have prefilled this important subject line in place: Docket ID FDA-2024-P-1916-0001
(In case it doesn’t work for you, the email address is AskCVM@fda.hhs.gov )
Here’s what I wrote them, in case you’d like a starting place to write your own comment:
Re: the pet food poisoning that’s going on at present, with current estimates at 2,600 pet illnesses, 500 pet deaths, and 21 human illnesses.
As a veterinarian, I’m extremely concerned that CVM has taken no action to warn the public about this or even minimally, to ensure them that appropriate testing is taking place so the offending substance(s) can be identified and the foods pulled from the market.
Please, in the name of the innocents sickening and dying in this long playing incident, make this a priority and inform the public at once what’s being done to prevent more damage.
As it is, you’re losing the public’s trust as the days go by without any warnings from you.
Sincerely,
________________
Dr. Will Falconer, Certified Veterinary Homeopath
Vital Animal | The Natural Path
p.s. In case you’ve missed it, if you’re feeding commercial foods to your pets, there is something toxic in many brands. See my earlier post, complete with homeopathic solutions if your animals appear sick after a new bag or batch of food has been started.
When My Website Disappeared
My home turf on the net is VitalAnimal.com and it’s been dedicated for years to calling out the risky business that Big (Pet) Pharma and Big Pet Food and other big goons employ that can easily damage your innocent animals.
Years ago, before censorship was really a runaway train like it’s been since Covid, I made a post that went deep on a very dangerous (though popular with vets) drug called Apoquel.
This drug is made by Zoetis, originally a branch of Pfizer, who you may have heard of (cough, cough).
When the comments began pouring in on my post, the Google algorithm sent it soaring for anyone searching for more info about the drug, and suddenly…
My site started mysteriously going dark.
For stretches of twenty minutes or so, multiple times over a couple weeks, you couldn’t find the entire site!
WTH? I’ve been hacked!
It took some time to resolve and it’s not happened since hardening our defenses, but if you want to read all about it, the story is here: I Annoyed Big Pharma
Et Tu, Merck?
There’s a second dirty trick from Big Pharma noted in the same article, re: another post I wrote about Bravecto.
That’s the totally amazing killer of fleas that goes to work 2 hours after your dog swallows the poison chewable and lasts (gasp) for 12 weeks!
You’re likely familiar with the results of a search on the web, whether you use DuckDuckGo, Start Page, Google, or my new favorite search engine called Kagi.
Below the title of the page that pops up in search results, you’ll see a short summary paragraph, aka a “snippet” of what the post is purportedly about.
As you’ll see in the post, this second abuse in my site was a case of a comment from a Pharma shill used as the snippet!
None of my words, nothing of my warning that this was a dangerous killer drug, but rather a flowery bit of assurance that this killer of fleas is likely safe for most dogs.
How low can they go…?
When profits are at stake, it appears there’s no bottom in sight.
That too, got corrected after a skirmish and the perps have gone largely unchecked, though I’ve had several queries re: a class action suit against the likes of Zoetis (none I’m aware of. Yet).
There is one afloat against Merck’s Bravecto.
Bottom line: you, as a consumer and a caregiver of your animals, are the one who must be performing due diligence before allowing a potentially harmful or toxic drug to be given to your loved ones.
Big Pharma is clearly Profits First! and isn’t above dirty tricks when it might save their share price.
“Any Research on Stopping Apoquel?”
Sharae writes,
Is there any research on stopping apoquel in a dog and it becoming healthier? My golden retriever is almost 10. He has taken it for a long time for allergies. He has small "fatty tumors" (the vet calls them that)
All over his chest. About 5. I am hoping by stopping the apoquel it will give him a prolonged life and perhaps healthier life? Note, his blood work is all really good, red blood cells/ white blood cells and all the other systems in his body. Any insight is appreciated.
I replied that, as you can imagine, there’s never been nor will there be any research on what happens when a drug is stopped. That would clearly eat into profits.
The name of the money game is to keep patients chronically ill and dependent on drugs.
So, for example, no diabetic will ever get cured from taking insulin.
No allergy ridden pet (allergies thanks to vaccines) will ever be cured by any drug that suppresses the immune system (Apoquel’s strategy).
And no dog will ever become less attractive to fleas and ticks after having used Bravecto, the blood borne poison I wrote about last issue.
I urged Sharae to pay close attention to the comments on my chief Apoquel post, as the #1 side effect to this immune system suppressor drug appears to be cancer, often cancer of the immune system itself.
Oops!
The odds are, stopping the Apoquel, even after years of use, will allow the allergies, never cured by the drug, to re-emerge.
Will he be healthier for stopping the drug?
Yes. The potential for serious side effects will lessen, and while the allergies are likely to make a return showing, they can be effectively cured with homeopathy, via a skilled practitioner, if there’s still time on a 10 year old Golden’s clock.
In the ideal world, if you have an allergic animal (itchy, inflamed skin and/or ears), rather than jumping to a drug that suppresses the immune system, I’d urge skipping that dangerous step and getting right into a homeopathic vet’s practice, whether there’s one near to you or across the country.
Why? Because homeopathy, employed carefully by those who use it as their main modality, has cured chronic disease like allergies.
Instantly, like Apoquel seems to do?
No, but true cure is worth investing in and having patience with the process.
And there are only great “side” effects once the disease is, in Dr. Hahnemann’s words, extinguished.
Tasty Tips: Wound Healing
Better than Hydrogen Peroxide
Could Dr. Falconer address the use of H2O2 for dog wounds? It is discouraged by Veterinarians, but I have only observed good results in its use for wound healing. Thank you.
I grew into manhood around a herd of horses at my YMCA camp in Wisconsin. Any wound they got, laceration from barbed wire, a bite from the stallion, what ever, our standard treatment was a cotton ball soaked in hydrogen peroxide, squeezed over the wound and allowed to foam (the fun part to watch, right?).
This was always followed by a yellow furacin based spray (or did we have a red one?)
And, everything healed, just as you said.
But, as you say, we were trained in vet school that it was more harm than benefit, and you’ll see that if you search “why not use hydrogen peroxide on wounds?” in your fave search engine.
The consensus of the search is that, while the foaming will definitely kill bacteria in a dirty wound, the oxidation reaches also to healthy cells around the border of the damaged ones, and harms them. Net result: slower healing.
We used Betadine widely in vet school and in my first practice. It’s a “tamed” iodine that doesn’t interfere with healing but is highly effective against local bacteria.
Even in the farmer’s barns, when it was time to open a (standing) cow’s abdomen to repair a “twisted stomach” or do a C-section, we’d scrub with an iodine soap and finally leave the soon to be incised skin saturated with Betadine.
To cover our butts, we’d also finish the surgery by dumping a bottle of antibiotic in the abdomen before we’d close but, knock on wood, we never had sepsis post-surgery and that skin cleaning must have helped.
Healing of the longgg incision proceded apace and Bossy’s milk was useable again after 48 hours (“hold four milkings” was our clear language to the farmer).
But now what would I do, after 30 some years in holistic medicine?
I’d ditch the H202 and use manuka honey topically, more based on rave reviews than any personal experience.
And, if the wound was severe enough to worry about the health of the animal overall, I’d give Arnica montana 30C or 200C orally.
Topical arnica, while perhaps tempting, never will work as well as oral, where the vital force is triggered immediately to turn on the healing of the animal more quickly and efficiently.
A second remedy that might follow Arnica well, especially in lacerations or piercing wounds is Ledum palustre. 30C will do fine and 200C even better.
To be fair to my homeopathic history, topical Calendula lotion is another possibility if honey is too messy (or too quickly licked off!).
Note: never use the tincture of calendula directly on a wound. Way too much alcohol, which will also impede healing greatly.
You can make your own or use a long standing product called HyperCal, a combo of hypericum and calendula, made for topical use.
Recipe to make your own Calendula lotion
1 cup purified water
1 tsp calendula tincture (found in any homeopathic pharmacy or from some herbalists)
1/4 tsp salt
Mix together and apply to the wound liberally 2-3x/day, squeezed from a cotton ball or dribbled on with a syringe. Healing will be hastened and free of infection.
Maybe none of these wiser solutions is as cool as watching the foam of hydrogen peroxide on a wound, but they’ll get the job done more efficiently.
Along the Natural Path
My path is decidedly different in appearance now, as we’ve traveled to our highest elevation ashram in one of Uttarakhand’s hill stations. These were the places often developed during the British rule of India, when the military officers sought refuge from the blistering heat in the plains below. You’re looking at the Himalayan foothills.
The air is pure, a bit thin until you get used to it (about 6500 ft above sea level), and the views are gorgeous. I’m here in what I call my “happy spot” for the next couple of months.
While it’s 102º where I left, it’s a cool 67º here today, after some showers came through.
I’m back in monkey land:
…but these guys are only interested in food, while the ones in Vrindavan are highly skilled at robbing eye glasses and iPhones and holding them hostage in a tree until you toss them a pack of the ever present biscuits sold in India. Then they’ll careless discard your valuable and dig into the payoff.
Just across the road, there’s an old growth forest. Well, okay, so it’s also an old, old cemetery, but I’m less interested in the old British graves than these towering giants:
Some of these conifers have to be close to 200 years old. It’d be a challenge for two grown adults to wrap their arms around their trunks.
There are a mix of conifers and palm trees, a very odd combo to this biologist’s mind, but this is India. Here, most anything seems possible.
I’ll leave you with a sign of the respect some builders here have shown here. My morning hike takes me past a lovely new home built into the side of rocky wall. This is the lower view with a wall built around a) a rock outcropping and b) an old tree trunk, with a living tree above.
Calling Animal Bluffs
Monkeys
A few naughty Macaques found a way to open a door and get into our ashram garbage. I came upon the after party, with mango seed and peels and odds and ends strewn about. I approached somewhat menacingly, to get them out of the way of a woman who wanted to enter the door they’d opened to get up to her room.
Like most all the Indian women I’ve met, with rare exception, she wanted to give the monkeys wide berth. Fear rules most Indians of both genders when it comes to crossing a monkey’s path.
This year the monkeys have upped their game in human confrontation.
They are hungry, always on the lookout for chances to nab a morsel of anything remotely edible.
When scolded, or a foot is loudly stamped in their direction, they aren’t fazed. I took it to another level and loudly berated this one monkey who seemed the boldest and most in the way.
He took one small step back, then immediately came forward towards me, face in its most threatening, full toothed countenance!
“Chuff!” (which I interpreted as “Nope!”)
I countered immediately, not backing up an inch, raised my fist and doubled my shouting volume. He climbed up out of the way finally after a couple more challenges, but only with a loud DEEP voiced, strong show of bravado from me. (I refrained from cursing him out. I was in an ashram, after all 😉)
But when I turned around to usher the woman through, she had vanished! It was all too much for her, apparently, and she postponed her intended foray for another, far from the monkey business.
Dogs
Two local canines saw me doggedly climbing the steep road I hike every morning here in the Himalayan foothills, and started a ballyhoo of barking. I kept coming of course, but they didn’t seem ready to allow a peaceable passage.
Time to call their bluff.
I picked up a couple of roadside stones, and by the time I raised my head from the task to continue my upward journey, they were noiselessly hightailing it up a side path, giving me full access to their earlier claimed territory.
“Ha, I thought as much,” I muttered, as I continued upwards, dropping the stones.
But on a more recent day, a black long haired Lab sized dog saw me and a companion climbing and came running straight for us, tail in wild helicopter moves, quite unlike any wag I’d ever seen.
I chose to view this as blissful friendliness, and raised my voice a few octaves, “Who’s a happy boy!?”
And, it turns out, HE was. So glad to get some petting and attention, but as he was a greasy guy, I didn’t continue for long and off we climbed.
Until next time, what ever your natural path looks like, get out on it. Sit in the ferns, give the moss a stroke of love, and wipe the resulting beneficials all over your face. Your gut will thank you a bit later.
Take mindful care of those animals who call you #1 by making wise decisions on their behalf.
I’ll see you in a couple more weeks.
lovely writing and lots of good information!