Paws for Concern: Pet Safety Standards

Pets have become part of our families, making the need for safety standards greater than ever.

Join host Dave Walsh and his guest Brian Grochal, director of safety and quality with pet product company Bark, as they discuss pet toys, harnesses, and more.

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Transcript

Carla (00:17):

Our mischievous sweet kitty Charlie is just about a year old. She's become a DoorDasher lately. She loves to ride on our shoulders or on our back and she could definitely be a star in those videos of cats doing parkour at 4AM. She knocks over all manner of things and wakes us up with new antics every morning.

Jim (00:35):

So my dog is named Tango. He is a eight-year-old French bulldog. We've had him for about two years and he is the reason that I have gray hairs at 28. He has, uh, an Instagram page. Be sure to follow. It's tango number five where he reviews music, everything under the sun. So give it a follow.

Howard (00:57):

Riley is our 14-month-old Labrador retriever. She has no concept of acceptable risk. There's ever a case for safety standards, it's her.

Dave (01:09):

So if you haven't guessed by now, the topic of today's podcast is pets and pet products. As many listeners are aware, societal attitudes toward pets have changed greatly in recent decades, with more and more people considering their pets part of their families. And with this attitude shift has come an increased focus on safety and making pet products that are non-toxic and non-hazardous to our animal friends. I'm your host, Dave Walsh, Editor-in-Chief of Standardization News. And today I talk with Brian Gaushal, Director of Safety and Quality Standards with pet product company BARC. He's also a member of the subcommittee on pet products. 

Okay, so in our introduction, we had numerous ASTM staff members talking about their pets. So Brian, now it's your turn to tell us about your pet. I understand you have a dog there.

Michael (01:54):

I do. Uh, his name is Duckworth or Duck for Short. I'm actually looking at him right now. He's looking out the window for squirrels and birds, but, um, he's my little coworker. I think he loves toys more than any dog that I've ever met. He's a little Husky mix, but only about 14 pounds. So he's pretty much a tiny sled dog.

Dave (02:16):

Yeah, that's a big mix if he's a Husky in 14 pounds. <laugh>

Michael (02:19):

Yeah, yeah. We have to keep him active or he's bouncing off the walls. Yeah, he's been on some aggressive hikes, I'll put it that way.

Dave (02:26):

Well, talking about his hikes and his, his playing with toys kind of leads into my next question because before we get into the specifics of the standards and discuss, you know, ASTM's role and all of that, we've had a few discussions among ourselves here about what does testing look like in your line of work when we're talking about pet products and harnesses and cat trees and those sort of things. Some of us pictured a, a lab full of dogs and cats running around crazy. Do you have dogs in SUVs or pulling on harnesses? Do you have cats with sensors climbing cat trees? What does that all look like?

Michael (02:58):

It's a bit challenging. You know, it's not like you can ask a dog or a cat to simulate exactly what you're looking to do. And I think that's one of the biggest challenges with building test methods. It's repeatability. You know, we always try to simulate normal use and foreseeable misuse. So, you know, for dog toys, we're trying to simulate tugging and chewing and yanking and scratching. And for a little bit, we tried building actual d- replica dog jaws that we would use for that testing, but we found that it's very difficult when you look at the entire landscape of toys. So we ended up trying to find preexisting test methods that apply similar forces but in a repeatable manner. You know, similarly for dog crates and kennels, we have a test, I call it the anxious dog test where you have a dog that does not want to be in the crate and kennel and they're, you know, literally bouncing off of the walls.

(03:55):

Uh, we put in tests to try to simulate those kinds of forces, collars and harnesses. We have what I call the squirrel test where, you know, dog is on a leash, sees a squirrel, goes darting after it. But similarly, we have other tests that are more like constant tugging than that jolt of energy. So it really is about considering human behavior, interacting with the product and dog behavior, which I, I think is the bigger challenge because as many people with pets know dogs and cats are extremely unpredictable.

Dave (04:27):

That kind of leads me to a, a side question. Is there a particular breed that works better in these situations than others? I, you mentioned the squirrel test and I have a bulldog that would just bolt and never come back if, <laugh> if there was any kind of stimulus. So is, is there a particular breed?

Michael (04:42):

Yeah, I would say it depends on the type of test. For chewing, I don't think it gets much stronger than pit bulls. They have the strongest jaws and in my experience, the strongest tendency to try to put toys in their back molar for aggressive chewing. For leashes and collars, you know, it really varies, but, uh, yeah, a lot of dogs have that instinct where when they see an animal, they wanna get it.

Dave (05:06):

So you are part of the Pet Product Subcommittee and that is part of ASTM's F15 committee, which is the committee on consumer products. But your subcommittee is relatively new and it had its first meeting in late 2022. So I thought I'd get back to the beginning of that. What led to the creation of this subcommittee? Was there any one factor? Were there accidents that you might have been tracking or some kind of a trend that you saw?

Michael (05:29):

Yeah. You know, this started, I spent about 10 years in the world of baby products, uh, all of that time working heavily in standards development with ASTM. And I saw a job opening at a pet product company, uh, Bark, my current employer. And when I came to research the landscape for regulations for pet products, I realized there was nothing. That was a big part of the reason that I wanted to leave the world of baby products and join BARC. It was to try to build something. So I, I thought I had this unique background where I'd spent 10 years working in baby product standards, four of those years with a test lab where I could really understand how the actual tests were put into force. So I thought I had this unique background to actually do it. Um, and that was one of the first things I did.

(06:16):

I joined in the spring, put a proposal in the summer to form this subcommittee and then it got approved in October of 2022. So, you know, I'd say I was the initiator of it, but once I went out on outreach trying to find companies to get involved, uh, I found that everybody was aligned on that common goal of making pet products safer. We don't really have an injury database quite like human products, but I knew that there must be a lot of injuries with pet products and especially in the category of toys. I mean, toys are intended to bring out those destructive dog instincts. The, the tugging, the squeaking, the defluffing and I, I knew that some dogs would have that instinct to eat the product after or could end up, you know, damaging their teeth or otherwise get themselves into trouble. So we knew it would be a great category to tackle and once we got all those stakeholders together, we, uh, got to work and discovered that we were all kind of doing the exact same thing.

(07:19):

So, uh, made a lot more sense for us to come together as an industry and put together consensus standards.

Dave (07:26):

Yeah. And as a dog owner, I have to say, quality and safety were two things that I noticed years ago with regard to these toys and maybe that was part of your thinking, that we've all bought a cheap toy for a dog and they just demolish it in an hour.

Michael (07:39):

And that's one of the things that I didn't grasp when I, uh, joined Bark and got into the world of pet products. In my experience in baby products, if a product fails, it's one of two things. Either it wasn't designed correctly and design does encompas materials or the actual way that it's constructed or it wasn't manufactured correctly. It has some kind of manufacturing defect that leads to failure. But in the world of pet products, I've come to realize that you can have a toy that is designed well, produced well, it, it's a high quality toy, but it still ends up failing and that's because there's a right product for the right pet. You know, to give an example, some dogs are just not meant to have flush toys and they have that instinct to destroy it no matter what. And no matter how high quality of a plush toy you develop, they'd still figure out a way to get through it.

(08:30):

So it really is about that right product, right pet.

Dave (08:34):

So getting into the actual standards work that has been done in your subcommittee and in F15 as a, an umbrella there. The first standard was recently passed and it covers dog harnesses for motor vehicle safety specifically and that is F3725. So I wondered what factors led to this being the first standard? Why was this prioritized over others? Was it a safety issue that maybe came to your attention?

Michael (08:59):

So interestingly, there was a separate group of manufacturers that got together, I think eight to 10 years ago to develop a standard. They all produced those dog harnesses for motor vehicles and they found that some products were advertising being crash tested, but there wasn't really a definition for what crash tested meant. So those manufacturers came together, started working on a standard independently of ASTM and then when I first formed the subcommittee in 2022 and they got wind of it, uh, they reached out about trying to partner and potentially get their standard into the mix. So when they came in, they already had a standard that was almost 80% complete. I ended up taking it over after about a year and helping to get it over the finish line. But, uh, yeah, that's really the reason. It's really that, that passionate group of manufacturers decided to start work on that and get it published within ASTM.

(09:56):

Well,

Dave (09:56):

And, you know, because it's so new, I haven't even seen one in stores yet, so I was wondering, what does it look like? How does it work? How does the design of a dog harness work? It's obviously not a seatbelt like a human would wear, so what is the look of it?

Michael (10:09):

Yeah, so there's a couple different varieties. Some of them literally clip into the seatbelt buckle and then attach to a dog's harness. Uh, other ones have a different way of attaching to the seat or the latch anchors in a car, but really the intent is to keep the dog confined to the backseat of the car and not flying through the windshield or really becoming a projectile in the event of a crash. So this category really tried to align with how children's car seats are being tested. They undergo a really fast crash, I believe it's 30 miles per hour and they end up using a dog dummy to understand how the dog interacts with the sled during testing to make sure that they don't end up becoming a projectile.

Dave (10:59):

What are some of the biggest challenges your subcommittee has faced? From what I've seen, the variety of pets, the wide range of breeds even within one pet group like dogs, that seems to be a factor because it can lead to dramatically different sizes of animals. Juveniles versus adults seemed like a, a major issue. What are some of the challenges that you would consider the biggest ones you've faced?

Michael (11:20):

Yeah, I mean, you're, you're spot on. That's one of the largest ones. There's just so many different breeds of dogs and cats and birds and different sizes, different weights. Even within the same breeds, there might be different looks and makeups and, and then instincts. You know, different pets have different instincts and it's really challenging when the animal can't tell you what they're thinking. So it's really up to the, the human to try to make good decisions on behalf. And the other challenge is just lack of data and research. Now data, that's something we're trying to address. We are looking to launch a pet products injury database. Uh, we're talking to a few different partners on that and the idea is that vet clinics, um, as well as consumers could enter injuries into a database and include some basic information about the product and what's happening.

(12:14):

And then within the ASCM group, we could actually analyze that data, look at what trends we're seeing and try to put in fixes in the standard to address those hazards. The other piece is lack of research because when it comes to non-food pet products, there is very little research out there and that's something that we decided to try to address within the standard. So we formed a pet products research group, I think it was 2023. To date, we've raised right around $100,000. We've already completed two research projects and we have a third one underway. Uh, one of the research projects, which I think is just fascinating is around getting anthropometric data on dogs. So by that, I mean CT scanning dogs of various sizes and shapes and trying to extract internal measurements, measurements of their esophagus, of their jaw and mouth and throat so that we can use that data in order to determine for toys what size of toy is too large or what size of toy is too small that it could become a hazard.

(13:24):

Uh, then we had a different research project around hearing safety and trying to figure out what decibel level and frequency could cause hearing damage to dogs with too much exposure. The third project that's underway is around toxicity and chemical safety. That might be a multi-part project, but as phase one, we're looking to take blood and fecal and urine samples from dogs when they're admitted to a vet clinic after ingesting some kind of household item or pet product and then seeing if there's any abnormalities or irregularities as well as collecting survey data and really looking for patterns in that data that we might be able to eventually turn into chemical safety restrictions that we could put in our standards.

Dave (14:09):

So you brought up an interesting point though when you mentioned data and research and it, and you kind of touched on the fact that it, it hasn't existed to this point and I wonder if you ever delve into the sort of psychological and societal aspect of pet products and the pet industry in general where maybe a hundred years ago people loved their pets and everybody had a dog or a cat, but only in recent times do we see them thought of more as members of the family and regarded more highly by owners. You know, people don't just think of the dog as living in the backyard in a doghouse like the old cartoons in the 20th century that we used to watch. They think of them as family members. Is that part of this movement in any way, do you think? And is the, the new push for research and data may be part of that?

Michael (14:52):

I mean, you, you're spot on. I mean, I view my dog as a member of the family. He was, you know, our first fur child and that really is the direction that things are heading. And, and I think that could be a direction that this research group ends up taking because there might be some behavioral considerations that affect the dog's health. I, I would say this research group is trying to be founded in injury and safety, but, you know, longevity is one thing that we would consider in scoping new projects.

Dave (15:22):

Well, your group has a number of future standards on the way. The dog harness standard was just the tip of the iceberg. There are four work items in development covering things from cat trees to the actual dog toys we discussed earlier. So what can you tell us about these upcoming standards? How are they going to make pets safer and ASTM's tagline is to help the world work better. So how will it help achieve that? Yeah,

Michael (15:46):

I would say all these standards are looking to tackle safety in a couple ways. One of them is physical mechanical safety, so really trying to understand how the pet would interact with the product and putting in tests that simulate that and address the hazards. Chemical safety, making sure that as the pet interacts with the product, there's no sort of toxicity that might be exposed to them. And then warnings and messaging is the other piece. I talked earlier about how it's important to get the right product for the right pet and by aligning messaging across different brands and manufacturers, that's the best way that we ensure that happens. Instead of having little variations of a similar message, having the same message on every product, that's how you really influence consumer behavior.

Dave (16:36):

Well, you've mentioned toxicity and chemical composition a few times now, so I'm kind of wondering what is the next priority of your subcommittee? We discussed a bunch of different areas, but what do, what is the one thing you're working on next that you saw as the most maybe urgent need? Is it that toxicity or is it a different element?

Michael (16:53):

I would say it's more the physical mechanical hazards. There's not a lot of data that we have on chemical safety and again, it's a challenge to try to tie some of those diseases that you see in pets to the actual products that might contain those chemicals. I would say the priority is really to continue expanding into new product categories. Again, we have on published standard for others underway, but the goal here is really to tackle everything that you would find in a major pet store. It could be reptile lamps, bird cages, fish tanks, as well as cat toys, uh, feeding products, leashes and tie offs. So we really do plan to expand to new categories and kind of set the baseline for safety so that once we start getting a stream of data, we can continue to improve those standards.

Dave (17:45):

Do you think your subcommittee would ever eventually touch on the subject of maybe not food necessarily, but treats and snacks and things like that that you can buy in a pet store? Because again, as a dog owner, this is the thing that a lot of people talk about, like, what foods, what snacks? What am I feeding my dog that might be toxic? It seems healthy enough. So I don't know if that's going to be anywhere on your radar.

Michael (18:07):

Uh, that is something that we could tackle in the future. It would definitely be a different subset of subcommittee members that we would look to collect, but the bottom line is it covers pet safety. Now, this is a little bit different in that the categories you just mentioned are FDA regulated, although things like supplements are not. So that might be on category that we look to address in the near future.

Dave (18:33):

So at ASTM, as everyone knows, we have voluntary standards and that means that many of them are not mandatory. A manufacturer or a pet product company doesn't have to adopt them. So how would you address that? How would you encourage companies to adopt these without making it mandatory? How would that work?

Michael (18:52):

So we do have a plan in place. You know, it starts with trying to get the majority of the manufacturers and retailers on board working on the standards and agreeing to adopt it, but once we actually publish these standards, the best way to make it mandatory is to make it commercially mandatory. By that, I mean, really get all the major retailers to require compliance in order to sell in their store or marketplace. But beyond that, I think trying to expand internationally makes a lot of sense. So I would say once we continue to publish standards, we are going to look to share news with Europe and South America, Asia, major retailers, as well as standards organizations, encouraging them to adopt or transpose these standards in their respective geographies.

Dave (19:39):

In other areas, there's a prestige to adopting these standards and maybe a company that doesn't is maybe not thought of as highly as a company that does.

Michael (19:48):

Absolutely. And I think consumer outreach is another component of this. If we can drive consumers to want compliance to these standards, then again, if one of your competitors adopts this standard, you'll be more or less forced to adopt it as well.

Dave (20:03):

And as many of our listeners will know, ASTM's standards development process revolves around having a variety of stakeholders in the room and that could be manufacturers, consumers. So are you currently welcoming more members in the subcommittee? Maybe some listeners are thinking about joining and how is that representation working out from various stakeholders?

Michael (20:25):

Absolutely. So I would say right now, I think we're up to 115 pet product subcommittee members across 80 or 90 different companies and 11 countries last time I checked. But I'm a big proponent of getting more involvement from a wide range of stakeholders, especially I would say academia and veterinary professionals and even consumers. Those are the three groups where we're lacking. And while we do have decent involvement from retailers and manufacturers, I still think having more companies involved would only help. It really helps when companies have different perspectives, they've seen different types of hazards or injuries. Uh, having them all come together and share what they're seeing within the group leads us to develop stronger, more comprehensive standards.

Dave (21:15):

Yeah, and I should mention, and I'm sure you're aware, anyone can join an ASTM committee. So if there are consumers out there who might be, uh, motivated, amateur, who might have an opinion on this, they can join as well, I assume.

Michael (21:27):

Yes, that's correct. You don't need to be in the pet products industry to be a member. Really just being passionate and being aligned on the cause of developing safety standards for pet products and really try to drive more safety into the category, uh, that's really all that's needed.

Dave (21:44):

So we're sort of drawing to the end of our time here and I wanted to give you a chance with this last question to maybe let our audience know what's one thing you'd like to leave everyone here with if they can have one takeaway from this podcast. What is something you'd like them to know either about the standards specifically, the process in general, maybe your industry, what's a good takeaway for our listeners? I

Michael (22:05):

Would say it's really just that these safety standards are coming. It, it might take a few years, but we're gonna start publishing them soon. We're gonna start working through adoption and outreach and then we're gonna continue to get data and drive improvement to these categories.

Dave (22:21):

Well, I think we might have to have you back in the future because as you said, your committee's just getting underway. The standards are just in development and people, as we know, love talking about their pets, the two of us included. So we may have to have a part two of this someday down the road. But in the meantime, thank you for being with us today. We really appreciated it and I think it was very informative.

Carla (22:40):

Thank

Dave (22:41):

You. If you wanna learn more about any of the standards discussed in this episode, visit astm.org for all the latest. And if you enjoyed the show, remember to like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. I'm Dave Walsh and this has been Standards Impact presented by ASTM International.