Novartis - Program For Dogs

After doing some research on line; I have found a little information about the difficulty in buying the Novartis product; Program (flea control tablets for dogs and cats).  The Novartis Animal Health Plant located in Lincoln, Nebraska stopped production of Interceptor, Sentinel, and several other drugs on December 29, 2011.  Supposedly this was a voluntary action taken by the company for a re-tooling of the plant to meet compliance regulations. Back in December they expected this to only take one month and production would resume, as far as I can tell the plant is still down.

Those of us out there who use the product; Program for flea control, have not been kept in the loop on the shut down of the facility.  We are in good company, veterinarians were not kept in the loop either.  Many veterinarians have turned to alternative products for heart worm medication administered monthly in a tablet form, another product affected by the shutdown of the plant in Nebraska.  It sounds like one of the alternative heart worm products being used has some nasty side effects; one of the reason veterinarians were not using it in the first place.

It is really unfortunate that the Novartis Animal Health Plant in Nebraska has not been more forthcoming with the shutdown of their facility.  They manufacture products that consumers and veterinarians alike have found effective, you would think that they would like to maintain their customer base.  In order to do that; keep the public informed on what is happening and when we can expect to see the products they manufacture available again.

After this length of time and pretty much silence on the plant's side; one wonders if these products will ever be available again.  Is what happened at this facility related to our economic downturn?  Many companies were forced with hard decisions during these difficult economic times, most often staffing is greatly reduced.  If you don't have sufficient staff, corners are cut and that leads to problem in production.  Quality control seems to be one of the first thing to suffer when staffing is reduced.

(more tomorrow on this from Brandykegs)