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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An eastern Washington field has been contaminated with Roundup Ready alfalfa, the state Ag Department confirmed on Friday.

Monsanto’s GM alfalfa contaminates Washington crops

Rady Ananda
Activist Post
An eastern Washington field has been contaminated with Roundup Ready alfalfa, the state Ag Department confirmed on Friday. The farmer reports he did not plant it, nor wants it.
Of course we knew this was going to happen. Alfalfa seeds are only 2mm in size and can spread for miles on the wind alone. The Oregon crew who sabotaged the GM beet fields in June didn’t go far enough.
Alfalfa is planted on 17 million acres in the US and earns over $8 billion a year, reports Reuters, adding:

Exports of hay, including alfalfa, have been rising, hitting a record $1.25 billion in 2012, according to the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. Washington state is one of the largest producers of alfalfa for export.

Alfalfa is the most common forage used for grazing, and the organic meat and dairy industries are dependent on GMO-free hay.
Not only the organic industry, but biotech’s inability to contain their product is also economically sabotaging export farmers who use chemicals, but not GM seeds.
If we don’t stop the federal government from favoring the “death tech” industry (as Vandana Shiva calls it), all our food will be genetically modified, whether they label it or not, whether we like it or not.
When Bayer’s GM rice contaminated a third of all US rice in 2006, no regulator stopped them: not the USDA, the EPA nor even the judicial system.
“Regulators” are “still investigating” the GM wheat contamination in Oregon last May. The $8 billion wheat export business took a hit this year, and will likely suffer next year, thanks to another act of economic sabotage, the blame for which falls squarely on Monsanto, the company that brought us Agent Orange.
But, throwing money at the problem won’t fix it: Federal “regulators” and the biotech industry are contaminating all natural crops, whether we like it or not. This problem will not go away without serious intervention, because they do not want it to: this is the plan. The GM experiment started here, and contamination is worse here than anywhere else.
“Regulators” have allowed GM crops to be planted in our wildlife refuges. Our refuges! The source of vast biodiversity, where pollinators caught a break from all the chemical farms. No more. Biotech’s nasty chemicals see to that. Oh, sure, we won a partial victory back in 2011, when the US Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) agreed to yank GM plants from 11 Northeast states. In 2012, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, et al. got two dozen Southeastern refuges to be GM-free. The same plaintiffs just filed suit last month, again against the FWS, for allowing GM crops in refuges in Iowa, Missouri, Illinois and Minnesota.


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Washington state alfalfa crop may be contaminated with genetic modification

Farmer in Washington state reports his alfalfa shipment was rejected after testing positive for genetic modification

• Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
• theguardian.com, Thursday 12 September 2013 17.34 EDT

A healthy crop of mature alfalfa ready for cutting in North Carolina. Photo: Alamy

Authorities were investigating a new suspected case of crop contamination on Thursday – the second in the Pacific north-west in five months – after samples of hay tested positive for genetically modified traits.
The investigation was ordered after a farmer in Washington state reported that his alfalfa shipments had been rejected for export after testing positive for genetic modification. Results were expected as early as Friday.
If confirmed, it would be the second known case of GM contamination in a major American crop since May, when university scientists confirmed the presence of a banned GM wheat growing in a farmer's field in Oregon.
The suspected outbreak comes in the run-up to a ballot measure in Washington state that would require mandatory labelling of all GM foods.
Alfalfa is America's fourth largest crop, behind corn, wheat and soybeans, and the main feedstock for the dairy industry. A confirmed case of contamination could hurt the organic dairy industry, which is now worth $26bn a year, forcing farmers to find new sources of GM-free feed. It could also hurt a growing export industry. Alfalfa is increasingly sold for export but buyers, such as Japan, do not want GM products.


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• Washington state testing alfalfa for GMO contamination
• GMO Contaminated Alfalfa from Washington Rejected for Export
• Genetically modified alfalfa confirmed in Washington test sample
• Washington state alfalfa crop may be contaminated with genetic modification
• US Report of GE Alfalfa Contamination Was "Inevitable"