Last Wednesday, March 22nd, several members of SafetyCall’s regulatory team sat in on EPA and FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) first joint public meeting in which they presented a general and high level rationale and framework for their proposed modernization plan and heard the public’s questions and comments. EPA and FDA gave no specific updates during the meeting.
Thirty five individual presenters from the public spoke and, while some spoke for or against the proposed modernization, many seemed to feel there was not yet sufficient detail from the Agencies for which to form an opinion. Instead, several speakers took the opportunity to raise questions and points they felt prudent for the Agencies to consider as they continue to formulate their plan. Many representatives from the honeybee industry raised concerns over whether FDA had the knowledge and staffing in place to handle honeybee health; individuals representing clean wastewater and other environmental topics voiced their concerns over potential contamination from use of topical pesticides; private veterinarians raised concern for animal health and product availability; and other animal health associations such as the Animal Health Institute raised questions as to how this would impact product production and availability, animal health and wellbeing, and public health.
If you would like to read more about the proposal, click here. To leave a comment for EPA or FDA’s CVM by April 24th, click here.
