CVM Stakeholders Meeting
April 24, 1999 - Kansas City
Summary of Proceedings
This summarizes the general concerns and issues raised at the April 28, 1999, Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) Stakeholders’ meeting at the Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas. CVM’s meeting was held as a part of an FDA-wide initiative to solicit feedback from our stakeholders. More detailed information of this meeting can be found in the transcript of the meeting posted on the FDA web site.
There were a total of 89 attendees at this meeting. Eleven speakers representing veterinary drug manufacturers, animal feed manufacturers, producer groups, trade associations, consumers and consumer groups made presentations. Informal questions and comments were made by participants in an open discussion following the formal presentations.
FDA Kansas City District Office Director, Mike Rogers, opened the meeting by welcoming stakeholders and CVM headquarters participants to Kansas City.
Dr. Linda Tollefson, Director of CVM’s Office of Surveillance and Compliance, delivered the opening remarks and thanked the District Office and headquarters staff who were responsible for arranging the meeting logistics. Dr. Tollefson also presented to the stakeholder group a summary of what the Center heard at the previous Open Forum, held on September 19, 1998. Dr. Tollefson described the initiatives that the Center had developed to implement the ideas and suggestions that were made at that earlier meeting. She also provided an update on the status of each of those initiatives. Copies of Dr. Tollefson’s slides are available on our Home Page.
The opening presentation was followed by a satellite broadcast of FDA Commissioner, Dr. Jane Henney and Dr. Linda Suydam, giving their priorities and views on various FDA initiatives. They then took questions from across the country from stakeholders, by phone and telefax, as well as answering questions submitted by the live audience or that had been previously submitted to the stakeholder docket. To help with questions that were too specific for Drs. Henney and Suydam to answer, a panel of representatives from each of the FDA Centers was assembled and standing by.
State of the Center Presentation
After the satellite broadcast, Dr. Stephen Sundlof, Director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine, set the stage for the local CVM meeting by giving an update of the Centers budget situation for Fiscal Year 1999 and what is expected for Fiscal Year 2000. Copies of Dr. Sundlof’s slides are available on our Home Page.
The rest of the afternoon was spent with the two stakeholder panels providing information to the CVM panel. The stakeholder panels were composed of representatives of the industry, producer groups, academia, consumers, and consumer groups. The CVM panel was composed of representatives from each of the CVM offices and Dr. Sundlof. The CVM panel listened to what the stakeholder panels said and asked clarifying questions.
Antimicrobial Resistance: Several of the stakeholder panelists reiterated their support (from the September meeting) for CVM maintaining a strong science base, and encouraged the Center to base its regulatory decisions more on scientific data and less on other sources. The hottest topic at the meeting was antimicrobial use in food animals, and discussion of the Centers Framework Document concerning the same topic. Several of the panelists voiced their concerns about the provisions of the Framework Document and encouraged the Center to move forward quickly with its scientific risk assessment of antimicrobial use in food animals. They also supported continued development of the judicious use guidelines for antimicrobials and encouraged the Center to enhance and expand the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS).
Other Topics Discussed: Other ideas and suggestions offered by the stakeholder panelists for CVM were:
to more strongly enforce current regulations and to remove unapproved animal products from the market,
to include more veterinarians and food-animal producers in the Center’s decision-making process on antimicrobials and other CVM issues,
to continue and expand the use of compassionate INADs,
to move forward with and finalize the regulations on Veterinary Feed Directives (VFDs), feed mill licensing, and minor use/minor species,
to develop a veterinary drug database on the CVM Home Page on the World Wide Web (WWW), and
to communicate better with consumers and veterinary practitioners, particularly concerning the benefits versus the risk of using veterinary drugs.
The Center considers this meeting highly successful, just as it did the September 1998 meeting, and for the same reasons. CVM received strong support for most initiatives and sound advice and ideas for ways to improve those that were not supported. The Center thanks the Kansas City District Office for their excellent job as hosts, and all of the stakeholders who participated, particularly the panelists who presented their ideas and recommendations.
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