Animal Product Claims Under Increased Scrutiny
Old social posts are “active” marketing
Claims made about animal products seem to have a lower tolerated “acceptance level” than human products. This is a friendly reminder to take another look at your animal product marketing because there may be forgotten risky marketing statements that can come back and “bite you” (I couldn’t help the animal pun).
Here is one example. These are obvious disease claims that should be avoided, but usually, this would not “tip the scale” into warning letter territory in a human product.
From warning letter: “… for dogs was designed and tested to boost your do’s natural defenses against the unique host of fungal, parasitic, viral, and bacterial pathogens that flourish in the desert southwest.”
No company is too small to be off FDA’s radar. This company has a very small web and social media presence, but they were still discovered and cited. Anyone marketing products online is “fair game” for enforcement. I write more about this here.
Seven-year-old social media posts are cited in this letter. Plenty of two- or three-year posts have been called out in warning letters, but a seven-year-old post is going way back. I ask, does anyone really look at these really old posts? In the eyes of the FDA, these are considered active marketing and, therefore, should be compliant. Here is a post about this.
Scanning old social posts is critical to any compliance “clean up” project I conduct. These forgotten old posts provide only risk and no marketing benefit.
Here is an old and relatively lower-risk example.
From warning letter: “From your social media website. On January 29, 2016 you posted: “Important information: frequently when pets first start showing symptoms of Valley Fever they do not register a titer and thus the reason for misdiagnosis and the wrong course of treatment. If your pet is showing any signs then start Desert Defense while you await the diagnostics!”
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