Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced its final revision of rules under the Air Carrier Access Act which had required air carriers to treat emotional support animals as service dogs. The revisions give airlines significantly more discretion:
“The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recognized that restricting the online pet advice of Brownsville, Texas, veterinarian Dr. Ron Hines implicated his First Amendment rights,” the Institute for Justice (IJ) wrote in a press release today, “reversing a lower court ruling that occupational speech is not protected by the First Amendment. Dr. Hines now has the opportunity to go back down to the trial court and prove the First Amendment violation. Today’s decision has broad implications for other professionals who want to meet virtually with clients, especially in the midst of COVID-19.”
In a new report from the Better Business Bureau, the organization advised “extreme caution when shopping for a pet online, especially considering scammers’ evolving tactics.” The BBB says it has received almost 4,000 pet fraud reports in 2020 from the U.S. and Canada.
Amid the Pandemic Puppy Boom, Walmart is taking the plunge into the U.S. pet health insurance market. The mega-retailer’s decision to get into the pet insurance business — still a niche industry in the U.S. with less than 5% of pets now covered by an insurance policy–may be a gamechanger. Can Walmart take the pet insurance market mainstream?
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. is already making good on a campaign promise: “Let’s put dogs back in the White House,” the now president-elect wrote on his Instagram account days before Election Day.
Denver residents voted to repeal the “restricted breed ban” on November 3, 2020. They voted, instead, for a new permit process, to be administered by Denver Animal Protection.
Denver residents will now need to obtain a Breed-Restricted Permit.
The F.D.A.’s Center for Veterinary Medicine has just issued its first official statement on diet-associated dilated cardiomyopathy (or DCM) in […]
There’s another story, which may be more significant — which is the fact that the important new data was not announced or reported on F.D.A.’s website until after TCR started making inquiries about the conference materials discovered by Holly. Among those materials were “Opening Remarks” delivered by F.D.A. CVM chief, Dr. Steven Solomon, in which he seems to express concern for how his agency’s research might affect the “bottom line” of some pet food companies.
It’s been a busy and successful year for the U.S. pet insurance market at large, which has seen eight newcomers since 2017 alone: Wagmo (2020), Spot (started in 2019 with personality Cesar Milan as its figure head), Lemonade (July 2020), Prudent Pet (2018), TrustedPals (2019), Bivvy (2018), Companion Protect (2017), and Pumpkin (2019). The newcomers offer some of the most budget friendly options in the pet insurance market, but there are a staggering number of pitfalls neatly tucked away inside the fine print of the policies.
*More reporting coming soon* The Canine Review has learned that the FDA has released its first major update on diet-associated DCM (dilated cardiomyopathy, a progressive heart disease) in dogs and cats since its June 2019 bombshell announcement in which the regulator took the unprecedented step of singling out the 16 brands of dog food most frequently linked to DCM cases. The FDA’s 2020 update was first reported by third year veterinary student Caitlin Holly, who broke the story Sunday evening on her blog, Doc Of All Trades.