FDA Approved pet treats that may be poisoning your dogs and cats with toxic heavy metals.

Pet treats found contaminated with heavy metals - Health Ranger releases shocking data on lead, mercury and cadmium in dog and cat treats

Monday, April 21, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) My food science research in the Natural News Forensic Food Labs has turned up yet another alarming discovery... and this time, it's about pet treats that may be poisoning your dogs and cats with toxic heavy metals.
Over the last several months, I've been testing popular brands of pet treats sold by retailers like Amazon.com, and what I found is downright alarming:
• An astonishing 1.8 ppm of lead in Mundy Rawhide Gourmet Dog Treats made by a company called Cadet. The treats are made in China and labeled "NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION."
• A startling 6 ppm of cadmium found in "Red Shrimp" reptile treats made by Zoo Med.
• A shocking level of mercury -- over 0.5 ppm found in "Ocean Whitefish" cat treats made by PureBites and labeled "100% natural" and "made in the USA."
• Over 1.5 ppm lead found in "Natural Rawhide Rings" dog treats from a company called PetSafe. The product package says "Protect. Teach. Love." and is made in Taiwan.
See the full results right now for over 16 products at the Natural News Forensic Food Labs results page.
All results were achieved via ICP-MS laboratory testing that I conducted myself, using EPA-approved methodology variations. The Natural News Forensic Food Lab is in the process of achieving ISO 17025 accreditation.

Watch out! You may be poisoning your pet

What these results show is that high levels of toxic heavy metals are commonly found in pet treats. Even worse, these heavy metals are invisible to the human eye, and because they aren't labeled on products, there's no way to know how much lead, mercury, cadmium or arsenic you may be unintentionally feeding to your pet.
The picture on the right shows chew sticks that contain alarmingly high levels of lead, but you don't see the lead in the photo, do you?
Shockingly, manufacturers never disclose heavy metals content on product labels, and retailers almost never test for heavy metals. To my knowledge, Natural News Store is the only retailer in the world that tests everything we sell for heavy metals. Amazon.com never tests what it sells, and don't expect other retailers to, either.
See the PetSafe natural rawhide rings on the left? They're made in Taiwan from rawhide, sorbitol and potassium sorbate. But they also contain over 1.5 ppm of lead.
Just to give you an idea of what that really means, just one rawhide ring weighing 8 grams would expose your dog to over 24 times the daily lead limit set by California Proposition 65. That's almost a month's worth of lead in a single pet treat.
See the full results right now at the Natural News Forensic Food Labs results page, where more than 16 pet treats are detailed.

Contaminated pet treats can kill your favorite dog or cat

Contaminated pet treats can kill your dogs or cats. The FDA openly warns about this on its website(1), saying:
Since 2007, FDA has become aware of an increasing number of illnesses in pets associated with the consumption of jerky pet treats. As of September 24, 2013, FDA has received approximately 3000 reports of pet illnesses which may be related to consumption of the jerky treats. Most of the reports involve jerky products sourced from China. The majority of the complaints involve dogs, but cats also have been affected. The reports involve more than 3600 dogs, 10 cats and include more than 580 deaths.
Over the years, thousands of family pets have been killed by contaminated pet treats, and more deaths will occur until this industry is required to meet stringent quality standards.
Sadly, the FDA still has no limits on heavy metals in pet treats or pet food, so a company can legally manufacture pet treats containing almost any level of heavy metal toxins while legally selling that product at Amazon.com or your favorite pet store.
The USDA, similarly, has no limits on heavy metals in certified organic pet food. So even "organic" pet foods and treats can contain extremely toxic levels of heavy metals while being certified organic by the U.S. government.
And while heavily-contaminated pet treats can kill your pet in a matter of hours or days, pet treats with sub-acute levels of heavy metals can still cause long-term chronic poisoning over time, where the heavy metals build up with each cumulative exposure.

Are there any pet treats with low heavy metals?

Yes! In fact, my laboratory research was able to verify that the "Real Meat Healthy Gourmet Dog & Puppy Treats" product made by the Real Meat Company(2) was remarkably low in heavy metals, registering zero cadmium, mercury and arsenic while showing only a tiny trace of lead.

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