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.
Read More Here
The
recalled product was shipped between July 13 and July 17, 2015 and
distributed to retail stores only in Maryland. No other K-9 Kraving Dog
Food products are affected by this recall.
Veterinarians
and the government are reminding pet owners that these treats are not
necessary to a pet’s nutrition or health. Safety advocates have been
asking the government to ban these imported treats for years, but
nothing has been done.
