Help to Protect Our Pets' Health

My Sweet Friend and Companion

This is an important issue to me, even more important today since now two of my kitty Jessie’s medications are compounded and created specifically for her. “Standard” pills or capsules in “standard” doses will not work for her or many other pets.

I’ve copied this email letter from the compounding pharmacists organization, and printed it below for you to read. I have forwarded their letter to my main veterinarian and to my pet loving friends. I plan to forward it on to other local vets here in the mountain area.

It's easy to follow their instructions on how to send an email form letter to your congressmen as there is a link at the bottom of the email that takes you to a form letter that we can send. Just fill in the blanks provided at the website with your own name and address and they will send an email letter from you to your local congressmen. It only takes about 1 minute to complete this. You can tell them to send you a copy of the letter they send out for your records.

Please join me in supporting and protecting our compounding pharmacies. I use their services and products for my own hormone supplements too. They have improved my life and now my sweet Jessie’s more than I can express.

We need to have the flexibility and convenience of specially prepared medicines for ourselves and for our pets who trust us to take care of them.

Thanks & Love,
Farmer Jen & Whispering Jessie

Here’s the link to use if the one below doesn’t work: https://secure2.convio.net/iacprx/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=219


Text from the compounding pharmacists email letter:


Protect Your Pet's Medications and Help Save Your Best Friends Life

Do you share your home with a pet? Whether feathered or furry, you know they’re an important part of your family and depend on you for love and care.

Part of that care is making sure your pet has access to the medicines and healthcare that’s right for them whenever illness strikes. The International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists (IACP) wants you to know that there’s something you can do – TODAY – to help guarantee that.

Over the past several months, IACP has worked with Congress to correct a discrepancy in the Food and Drug Administration’s policies on prescriptions for pets. The FDA has declared that preparing compounded medicines from pure pharmaceutical ingredients is inappropriate and even illegal. Why they have that policy is unclear, especially since the Agency recognizes the necessity and appropriateness of pure ingredients for human prescriptions.

And that doesn’t make sense. Your pharmacist needs to be able to use bulk products to customize the right dose for your pet. After all, a small kitten has markedly different medicine needs than a large dog, a parakeet has different needs than an iguana.

Yet, the FDA thinks the only “right” way to customizes medicines for pets is to make pharmacists use commercially available tablets or capsules that may contain other ingredients, fillers, or dyes that your pet can’t tolerate.

What can you do to help fix this problem?

Thanks to IACP’s work on your behalf as a pet owner, we have a formal letter from Congress going to the FDA. IACP has worked hard to secure bipartisan support of this inquiry. Congressman Charlie Gonzalez (D-TX) and Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) have agreed to be the lead sponsors and have already begun working with their Congressional colleagues to obtain as many signatures as possible. The more Congressmen that sign the letter, the more powerful it will be.

As soon as you can, contact your member of the U.S. House of Representatives and ask them to sign onto the Gonzalez/Blackburn Veterinary Compounding Letter. Tell them to contact either Cara Dalmolin in Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn’s office at (202) 225-2811 or Julie Hart in Congressman Charlie Gonzalez’s office at (202) 225-3236.

To make this as easy as possible for you, IACP has also prepared an Action Alert e-mail that will automatically send this request to your Congressman. You and your family can each send an individual e-mail by going to the following link – URL here

It only takes a few minutes to call or send an e-mail about this important issue. With your support, we will have as many Congressional signatures as possible. That will show the FDA that their unfounded and questionable position on the use of bulk chemicals/APIs in veterinary compounding is under serious legislative scrutiny.

Background About This Issue

The FDA has asserted (and in one case issued an injunction against a pharmacy on this issue) that custom preparations of medicine made pursuant to a veterinarian’s prescription cannot use active pharmaceutical ingredients (API), also referred to as bulk ingredients. They insist that compounding for animals must be done from finished (not bulk) product, even if this eliminates treatment options or negatively affects the quality of the medication. This interpretation will have a direct impact on your ability to compound veterinary products from APIs.

This position has far-reaching and negative implications for animal health as this would mean that most compounding could not be done or could not be done effectively. For example, converting a medication into a sterile injectable for a dog that is unable to swallow medication cannot be done from a finished pill; making a cream that is rubbed and absorbed into a cat’s ear must be made from API; and preparing medication for tropical fish eliminates the option of using finished product that has fillers that would contaminate their living environment.

The letter being developed asks that FDA withdraw their earlier guidance on this issue and allow an open comment period before its provisions are finalized. It is imperative that affected parties (veterinarians, pharmacists, pet owners, etc.) have an opportunity to comment on such a far-reaching guidance document.

FDA’s current position on this issue adversely affects pet and animal owners and veterinarians. It also adversely affects compounding pharmacies that make these veterinary medicines per prescription, the vast majority of which are small, family-owned businesses.

Click here to take action!



© Copyright 2010 Mountain Harvest Basket

Really Bad Day in the Kitchen

I have had my own kitchen for over 30 years now. I have cooked, baked, roasted, stir-fried, sauteed, canned & preserved all sorts of things. I am an experienced cook. I have had my share of kitchen mishaps and disasters over the years. That comes with the territory. Mistakes help you gain experience.

I have burned things, under-cooked things, had things stick to the pan. I've even had things catch on fire! Once, a very long time ago, the kitchen faucet even "exploded" all over me drenching me completely. Those last two were both during dinner parties that I was hosting!

None of those "disasters" can compare to the stupid, stupid mistake I made in my kitchen today. None of those previous mishaps made anywhere near the mess or calamity that I managed to pull off today.

I am so frickin' pissed right now! I am so mad that I feel like crying (for the past hour) but can't even relax enough to allow the tears to flow.

What the hell happened, you might ask? OK, I will tell you.

Remember that beautiful flat of organic strawberries that I wrote about in my last post? Well, I made that nice Shiny Red Pie and ate most of it myself, and then decided to save out enough strawberries to make a batch of strawberry jam. I love strawberry jam and so does my family, so I put aside about 5 or 6 pint baskets worth and waited until today when I finally had time to devote to the cooking and canning process. Fresh berries don't keep very long and I really didn't want to freeze them, so I had to make time in my day to make the jam and get it canned properly. I also wanted to enjoy the creative process.

Ok, so I carefully wash and hull 6 pints of strawberries. I realize I don't have enough sugar for the recipe, so off to the local market I go to buy a 5lb bag. Paid way too much for it, but hey, it's convenient to buy it here so close to home. Back home, I locate my half pint canning jars and a bunch of brand new lids and rims. I wash the whole case of them, even though I will only need 8 or 9 jars for the recipe.

Great, now I have everything I need. Finally. All organized and ready to go. Strawberries, washed and hulled. Check. Sugar, measured out and ready to pour into the cook pot. Check. Jars, lids, rims all washed and sterilized, ready and waiting in the preheated canner full of hot water.
Again, check.

I mash the strawberries with the sugar in the cook pot. I heat them gently until the sugar dissolves. I turn up the heat like the recipe says and insert the jelly thermometer to watch for the proper gel temperature. Up here at 3000 ft altitude, that would be 214 degrees F.

Now all I need to do is wait and stir, wait and stir, until the gel point temp is reached. I've made jam before. I've made lots of jam and many kinds of jam before. Strawberry, blackberry, peach, plum, apricot...even apple jelly. I've made jam. I know how to do it. Really don't even need to look at the recipe anymore, but I do so out of insecurity and...anal-ness.

It's taking awhile to boil and get any reading on the thermometer that is anywhere near 200 degrees. So I remember that I always seem to have the flame too low when I make jam not wanting to scorch the bottom or ruin the batch. So I turn up the flame, and I put the lid on the pot.

Fine. I stand there for a minute or so and then decide to leave the kitchen and go outside for a minute. Just a minute. One, maybe two minutes tops.

Huge mistake! Gigantic, stupid, huge mistake!! Don't ever do this. Don't ever, EVER do this.

I really was only gone for about two minutes. When I re-entered my kitchen the jam pot was fully boiling over and streaming red, gooey, sticky jam all down the pot, all over the stove and all down inside and under my stove top!

It was a big f*cking mess!! I have never, ever made that big of a mess in my kitchen before. There was partially cooked jam everywhere. I moved the cook pot of jam, now only half full. (Crap!) off of the stove. I also moved the very heavy and very hot canner full of sterilized jars and boiling water off of the stove. Removed the burners and then mopped up the thick sticky red mess from the top of the stove with a sponge and a wet dish towel. I was dripping sticky syrup all over the place. Then when I had removed enough of the jam from the stove top to allow me to lift the top and check to see if the pilot light was still lit (it was) I could then see where the rest of my pot of half cooked jam landed. It filled the depressions under the burners with about a half inch of red goo. I sopped that up with the sponge and rag, but it was no easy job. I had to climb halfway inside my stovetop to reach the mess and clean it without burning myself on the pilot flame or without making further mess. It was a crappy job, and I was so angry at myself for allowing it to happen in the first place.

I finally got it cleaned up enough to turn my attention back to my jam pot to see if I could salvage my beloved strawberry jam and all of the work that had gone into it. I wiped down the outside of the pot and put it back on the flame. Put the canner back on the fire too. I salvaged only about 1/2 of the recipe. That is actually what am I pissed off about the most. The mess was bad and unfortunate, but messes happen sometimes. I am really upset that I wasted half of my jam recipe. Those wonderful berries don't come along everyday.

So I finished cooking what was left of my jam as if nothing bad had happened. I turned up the flame to get it to the correct gelling temperature and then I filled the jars and processed them in my water bath canner for 10 minutes. (10 minutes because I live at 3000 ft, sea level would only require 5 minutes)

I lost over half of my beautiful deep red strawberry jam to that overflow spill and to my stupid lack of attention. I am still really pissed.

Oddly, in the middle of me cleaning up the sticky mess, I was composing this blog post in my head. I couldn't wait to tell you all about it. You people keep me sane. Thanks.

Here's a photo of my stupid 4 jars of organic homemade strawberry jam.

Organic Strawberry Jam





© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Snow Day & Rant

My driveway view as it began to snow ~ 8:30am



My same driveway view about 3 hours later!



My "snow measurement device" showing about 1 foot of snowfall

The day started off cold and snowy, but I was in an OK mood. It rapidly got worse.

I have been very stressed lately. I've had too much on my plate these past couple of weeks. I've had my head buried in legal software trying to help my Dad write up his Will, Trust, Power of Attorney and Health Directive documents. I've had to learn as I go along. Learning what the documents cover, learning how to write them and learning the legal software that I purchased to produce these documents. My Dad lives in another state (Boy, ain't that the truth!) so I have been trying to work out the details of these docs with him via telephone. He is not the most cooperative of individuals, to say the least. He is aggressive and a control freak. He will turn 90 next month, and has never gotten around to taking care of these important legal documents himself, so I am trying my best to help him, and it is very stressful for me. He doesn't understand all of the legal details and therefore he drags his feet on getting all of this done in a timely manner.

Meanwhile his doctor, the social worker, the home health company and the Adult Protective Services people are all trying very hard to shove him off into the nursing home of their choosing without regard to my Dad's wishes or even mine. I learned today that APS has had a case file open on my Dad for several months now, but not one time in all those months have they contacted me about it, and they have no excuse for that since they have all of my contact info from the last time they got involved in his life and mine. I am so stressed about this that I have been sleeping even less than usual lately. It falls to me to defend my Dad, protect him, watch out for his best interest and now I have to explain everything to the social workers and APS people as if I owed them reports or something. My Dad does not really grasp the seriousness of his situation. I am trying to intervene between him and the APS folks so that I can help him move into better living conditions that will make him happier and healthier. He resists all change and wants total control over everything, even though he cannot handle it himself anymore. He just doesn't realize that I am trying to help him and if he would just get out of his own way we could get the things done that he needs to get done. Arrrgggghhhh!!!

I am very frustrated and many times I have considered just throwing in the towel. If he would just cooperate with me and trust me, I could help him so easily and things would just fall into place to make his life better. But no, he has to over control everything and make everything so difficult, as if the social workers and APS people weren't making life difficult enough already.

Sorry folks. That was my rant for the day. I just really needed to get that off my chest for a few minutes. I am near tears almost all the time these past few days and I just couldn't hold it inside any longer.

What's all of this ranting got to do with my Snow Day pictures I am sharing with you? Nothing, except that I have been cooped up in my house all day dealing with this stuff because we got a foot of snow dumped on us this morning over the course of just 3 hours. The white sparkly stuff is very beautiful, but it does disrupt normal activities. I was supposed to receive a stress relieving massage today, but I had to reschedule it since I was snowed in here and couldn't drive anywhere today. Yesterday, I had to reschedule my own massage clients due to snow as well. So I am cooped up, stressed out, lacking money and needing a massage. Bah!

I was right in the middle of being creative in my kitchen this afternoon, making meatloaf in the oven and chopping up fresh veggies for homemade chicken soup on the stove, when I got the call from the social worker about my Dad. Totally blew away my cozy snow day mood. I was trying to have a little bit of time to myself and feel good in my kitchen. Not meant to be, I guess.

So I built a nice fire in my woodstove to keep the house and me warm today.


Nice warm fire


My kitties know how to get comfy and relax:

Frieda by the fire ~ she wouldn't face my camera

So I guess I just need to take life one day at a time and try my best to remain sane in the process. Some days, like today, I just want to run away and hide from the world.

Thanks for listening. I hope you at least enjoyed the pictures.

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket