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Topic: watch out for heavy metals in pet food

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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

lost my best friend Sampson on Friday, January 13, 2012. He died 9 days after ingesting the last food he ever ate: Waggin’ Train “Wholesome” Chicken Jerky.

I’ve since learned that we were part of a known epidemic. To date more than 600 cases of illness and death are attributed to chicken jerky treats made in China. Waggin’ Train and Canyon Creek Ranch -- both Nestle Purina brands -- are the lead offenders in the continued sale of chicken jerky treats.

The most shocking part is that the FDA has known about this for years, and has even increased their warnings as recently as November, 2011. They have researched thousands of cases, and the cases are mounting. Mine is now one of those that they are investigating. Although the FDA cannot FORCE a recall except in cases involving drugs or infant foods, the companies responsible should protect their customers and voluntarily recall the products in question until a definitive cause is found.

I need you to help me convince Nestle Purina PetCare Company to take chicken jerky treats made in China off the shelves until they can be proven safe.

Despite warnings from the FDA and the leading veterinary associations in the U.S. and Canada, Nestle Purina has refused all accountability, instead placing blame on people like me who have lost their companions. If their treats were safe, as they repeatedly claim, death and illness would never have been the end result for so many.

I have joined a wonderful Facebook group called “ANIMAL PARENTS AGAINST PET TREATS MADE IN CHINA!” When I joined in January, there were a dozen members. Two months later there are close to 4,000. The awareness of this horror is growing because so many have or know of a horror story involving CHICKEN JERKY TREATS.

No animal should ever have to die due to “treats.” How many thousands of grieving pet owners still have no idea what sickened or killed their pet? As long as these products are still on the shelves, the suffering will continue.

Please go to the Petition Updates Tab for important links to our Facebook, to the current FDA warning, and other informational links.


Last edited by untanglingwebs on Mon Apr 21, 2014 2:37 am; edited 1 time in total
Post Fri Jun 08, 2012 7:08 am 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

The above comment was on facebook. Thanks to Angela Alexander-Roth I did not give my dogs these treats after purchasing them at Sam's Club. I usually buy turkey jerky but this was all they had. When I saw Angela's warning I returned them. Angela is posting more warnings from people across the United States that have lost their pets. This is too much like the pet food mess og products from China that killed thousands of pets several years ago.

Sam's Clubs are sent products and told to sell them. The politics of what goes on our store shelves needs to be re-examined. Tell Sam's to stop selling this dangerous poduct.

Made in China is printed on the bottom left of the package,
Post Fri Jun 08, 2012 7:14 am 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

Dogs Fall Ill As Owners, Vets and Lawmakers Blame Treats from China

by James Andrews | Mar 09, 2012



When Maria Higginbotham couldn't find the usual dog treats she buys at her local Target store back in early January, she decided to instead buy some brand-name chicken jerky dog treats for Bandit, her 3-year-old rat terrier.




Four days later, Bandit collapsed on the floor.




He was soon experiencing bloody diarrhea, and by the time Higginbotham and her mother got him to his veterinarian, his organs were shutting down. His liver showed that he had eaten something toxic. Certain that Bandit's inexplicable illness had already become too severe, the veterinarian suggested putting him down, and Higginbotham's mother and son agreed.




But she refused, and after nearly $4,000 in medical bills and three weeks of intensive nursing that included in-home I.V. care, Bandit recovered. The vet could not conclusively link the chicken jerky to the illness, but Higginbotham said he thought it could be the cause.






Bandit's puppyish spark has come back, but Higginbotham remains anxious, feeling an overwhelming sense of helplessness over what she might be feeding her dog.




At the opposite corner of the country, in Eastern Florida, Danielle Kinard-Friedman's story did not end as well. Two weeks ago, Millie, her 18-month-old yellow Labrador, began vomiting bile after weeks of growing progressively more lethargic.




When Millie wouldn't eat anything, Kinard-Friedman took her to a vet. Blood tests revealed that Millie was experiencing kidney failure, and so she spent a week in an emergency pet clinic receiving intensive treatment that eventually proved futile. She was put down this past Sunday.




It was Millie's vet who asked Kinard-Friedman if she had been feeding her dog chicken jerky treats. She had. In fact, she had just started buying the treats -- under a different brand-name from Bandit's -- two months prior.




The vet then asked a more alarming question: Was the chicken from China? She had no idea, but she checked the label as soon as she got home. It was. When Higginbotham checked her treats, she found the same thing. Their vets could not prove anything, but both suspected the treats had sickened the dogs.




Higginbotham and Kinard-Friedman have now joined thousands of pet owners speaking out on the Internet and asking the government to force a recall of chicken jerky dog treats made from Chinese chicken. Concerns over the issue first arose in 2007, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration began receiving reports of sickened dogs, all with the apparent common denominator of chicken jerky treats from China.




Since then, the FDA has performed hundreds of tests on chicken jerky samples and has not yet found any contaminant to explain the illnesses.




Regardless, the movement has continued to gain significant momentum. In the past month, it even got the attention of Ohio's Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep. Dennis Kucinich after Ohio resident Candace Thaxton contacted them about two of her dogs who fell ill.




Until a cause is uncovered, owners and lawmakers say they will continue requesting that the FDA make the issue a priority, while the 15 companies implicated by consumers see no empirical evidence to justify recalling their products.




Congressmen and FDA sink their teeth in




On February 7, Brown brought the issue to the Senate floor, saying he had urged the Food and Drug Administration to accelerate its investigation into these chicken jerky treats -- found under multiple brand names but all sourced from China -- that appeared to be sickening dogs across the country. Two weeks later, the senator held a press conference and issued a news release again urging the FDA to act swiftly.




Back on Nov. 18, 2011, the FDA cautioned consumers that chicken jerky dog treats from China may be associated with a rising number of dog illnesses. This followed earlier warnings of the same issue in September 2007 and December 2008. After a drop in 2009 and 2010, reports of dog illnesses have spiked once again.





The November 2011 FDA notice warned dog owners who purchased chicken jerky to monitor their pets for decreased appetite, decreased activity, vomiting, diarrhea (including bloody), increased urination or increased water consumption. If any of those symptoms worsen or last more than 24 hours, owners should bring their dog to a vet, the notice said. Blood tests could indicate kidney failure, while urine tests might indicate Fanconi Syndrome, a disorder that results in nutrients normally absorbed into the bloodstream instead being released through urine.




On Wednesday, an FDA spokesperson confirmed to Food Safety News that the agency has recently received more than 600 reports from dog owners who say their pets have fallen ill because of jerky products made from Chinese chicken.




Since the issue first arose in September 2007, the FDA has run numerous chemical and microbial tests on Chinese chicken jerky samples in search of a contaminant. Though the agency said it could not conclude anything from the test results, the details remained under wraps until March 1, when an FDA document describing tests dating back to 2007 was sent to Kucinich's office. According to a Kucinich aid, the congressman "took them to task" at a briefing in order to get the information.




The one-page document outlines 241 tests for potential contaminants and 130 tests with pending results, none of which conclusively link the jerky to contaminants at dangerous levels. The 2012 tests with results still pending, however, are searching for heavy metals.




The Kucinich aid and many pet owners said they hope those latest tests might finally link the treats to a toxic substance and resolve the mystery of their pets' problems. The FDA has stated repeatedly that it will continue to actively investigate the issue.




According to the FDA, at least one Australian chicken jerky manufacturer has issued a recall of its products made from Chinese chicken, calling the move a precautionary measure.




The manufacturer may be mindful of March 2007, when hundreds of pet illnesses linked to melamine-contaminated Chinese ingredients prompted the recall of thousands of pet food products in the U.S., Europe and South Africa. In the U.S., the FDA received thousands of reports of dogs and cats dying from kidney failure, but confirmed very few cases.




More consumers come forward, but pet food industry says they're not to blame




A month ago, the private Facebook group called "Animal Parents Against Pet Treats Made in China!" had roughly 100 members. Today, the number has exploded to more than 2,500. One petition demanding the ban of jerky treats from China has acquired more than 3,000 signatures.






Susan Rhodes created another petition on March 3. She has asked the FDA to recall the jerky treats after she found that her dog, Ginger, had suffered permanent kidney damage and was losing weight at an alarming rate. Rhodes said she had been feeding the treats to Ginger for the past two years. Days after creating the petition, she has racked up more than 300 signatures from dog owners reporting similar diagnoses.




Media coverage and word of mouth have brought a tidal wave of attention to the manufacturers of these treats. Some of the snowballing coverage, however, might lead some pet owners to incorrectly blame other health problems on the treats, said Kurt Gallagher, spokesperson for the Pet Food Institute, an industry education and public relations resource.




"Pet food companies want to make safe, nutritious products. It's their top priority," Gallagher told Food Safety News. "When everyone's talking about something like this, I think there's heightened awareness and sensitivity for pet owners looking for it."




Gallagher recommended pet owners take any sick pets to a vet to get a clinical opinion before diagnosing any issues themselves. If the vet considers pointing a finger at a certain food, the owners should contact the food manufacturer. Food companies should be tracking their complaints and looking for patterns and problems within their food supply, he said.




Pet owners have been quick to amass lists of jerky manufacturers sourcing their chicken from China. Rhodes' petition, for example, names 15 such companies.




A spokesperson for a dog treat company at the center of the furor reiterated that the FDA's testing has not found any contaminants and so his company has no reason to believe their product has sickened dogs. The company has a comprehensive food safety system at their Chinese facilities, he said, including quality control inspectors who monitor for safety.




He added that his company appreciated hearing from concerned customers, and emphasized that anecdotal evidence, however pervasive, does not prove causation.

"Obviously, we take food safety very seriously," he said. "Millions of dogs enjoy our products without ever getting sick."





Multiple pet owners have told Food Safety News that the spokesperson's company has backed away from its original intention to offer customers small monetary settlements for harm their jerky might have caused pets. According to sources, once the complaints reached a certain volume, spokespeople for the company told customers that providing any settlements would be an admission of guilt.




Made in "America"?




Blogger Mollie Morrissette has been following the chicken jerky developments for more than a year on her website, Poisoned Pets. She said that the issue has reached a sort of tipping point in the last month, with more and more pet owners speaking up about sick dogs.




"I get letters every day from broken-hearted pet parents -- people who had to put down their beloved family dog or five month-old puppy," she said. "They all fed their dogs chicken jerky."




One issue frustrating pet owners, Morrissette said, is that many of these dog treat packages boast that they are made in the U.S., though the fine print on the package often reveals that the chicken actually comes from China, where a cultural preference for dark meat makes for cheap white meat.




These "country of origin" claims are made possible by laws that say that once an ingredient is "substantially" altered in a given country, the resulting food can be considered a product of that country. These alterations can include cooking, mixing or otherwise reprocessing the ingredients in some way.




Just as oranges from Brazil can be turned into Canadian orange juice, chicken jerky from China can be reprocessed and repackaged in the U.S. to become a U.S. product. This can trick consumers into a false sense of security about the safety of their pet's food, Morrissette said.




Higginbotham said that the brand of jerky she bought for Bandit claimed to be "Proudly manufactured by an American company." Kinard-Friedman believed the same thing about the jerky she fed to Millie.




Morrissette said that pet owners feel helpless as they wait for some sort of justice on behalf of their pet, and she criticized the FDA for what she saw as a lack of urgency in investigating the illnesses.




"A lot of these pet parents are just wringing their hands, hoping the FDA will find some sort of answer," she said. "If this was [potentially contaminated] baby formula, we would have had the answer when it started five years ago. It would all get pulled off the shelves out of caution as soon as anyone suspected it might be contaminated."



Owners say they won't back down until they have an answer




Candace Thaxton, the woman who spurred Senator Brown and Congressman Kucinich into action, has more than one dog motivating her to uncover that answer.




In November 2011, when her 10-year-old pug, Chansey, started urinating unusually often and refusing to eat, Thaxton assumed they were just signs that the dog was getting old.





Chansey's health quickly deteriorated. At a vet appointment, Thaxton learned that the dog's kidneys had shut down and she would need intensive medical treatment to recover, if it was possible at all. Thinking their dog had naturally reached end of her life, the Thaxtons chose to have her put down.




Within weeks, the family had adopted a mixed-breed "pixie" puppy named Penny, who earned a pristine bill of health at her first vet appointment.




Right around Christmas Day, Thaxton ran out of the treats that came with Penny when she was adopted, so she started feeding her Chansey's leftover treats: chicken jerky. Chansey had never eaten jerky until weeks before she grew sick. She died with her first bag half-finished.




In the weeks that followed, Penny started urinating more than usual. After New Year's Day, Thaxton saw a news story online about the FDA's warning for chicken jerky made from China. She checked her bag of treats, which said it was from South Carolina.




Then she noticed the text over the barcode: "Made In China."




Thaxton stopped feeding her the treats, but Penny started vomiting. When the vet saw her, she showed all the same symptoms as Chansey.




"Her kidneys were worse than Chansey's," Thaxton said.




Penny went on 24-hour surveillance at an emergency pet clinic. She recovered a week later, but Thaxton was just getting started.




"Candace went to bat," Morrissette said. "She's the driving force behind all of this, all the publicity."




Thaxton filed two complaints with the treat manufacturer -- one for Chansey, one for Penny. It looked like she was going to at least get a settlement amount to cover part of her $3,000 vet bill, but the company eventually rescinded as more complaints began to pour in, Thaxton said.




Even before the settlement talks broke down, Thaxton's story had run on two local news channels. When she was ultimately refused payment, Thaxton promised the company she would take the issue national within the week.




"By Friday night, Congressman Kucinich had written a letter to the FDA. By Monday, I had a press conference with Senator Brown," she said. "We've had two more conferences since then. I talked to Inside Edition. I told them I was going to be the one who pushed. I'm not stopping now."




Like Thaxton, other pet owners seem determined to keep the pressure on FDA to find answers and hold any guilty party responsible. For many, a sense of uncertainty, frustration, and even guilt, lingers.




"Pets are part of your family. When they die, you lose a family member," Higginbotham said. "I'm dealing with a lot of guilt over this. I'm the one who feeds my dog and is supposed to make sure he's safe and healthy. How do I do that if I can't even trust his food?"


----
Post Fri Jun 08, 2012 8:29 am 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

FDA: Jerky Treats Still Killing Dogs

Agency asks veterinarians, owners for help in years-long outbreak

By John Johnson, Newser Staff

Posted Oct 22, 2013 6:00 PM CDT


(Newser) – The FDA reached out to veterinarians and pet owners today for help in figuring out why nearly 600 dogs have died and another 3,600 have gotten sick since 2007 after eating jerky treats, reports NBC News. Most of the treats have come from China, but the agency hasn't been able to zero in on exactly what's so harmful to the animals. The agency wants vets and owners to contact the FDA when affected, and vets in particular are being asked to send along blood and urine samples and be more vigilant about reporting cases, reports the LA Times.

"This is one of the most elusive and mysterious outbreaks we've encountered," says an FDA statement. (You can read the separate letter to vets here and see an FDA fact sheet on jerky treats here.) Extensive testing hasn't turned up much so far, prompting one veterinary clinical pathologist to say, "I think that what it tells us is that the intoxicant is something that we're not used to dealing with as a toxin in North America."
Post Wed Oct 23, 2013 8:58 am 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

Amid Dog Deaths, FDA Proposes New Pet Food Rules
www.huffingtonpost.com
WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid incidents of pets dying from dog treats, the Food and Drug Administration is proposing long-awaited rules to make pet food and animal feed safer. The rules stem from a sweeping food safety law passed by Congress almost three years ago..
Post Mon Oct 28, 2013 6:39 am 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

Pet Food Safety Rules Proposed By FDA After Jerky Treat Deaths


AP | By Mary Clare Jalonick Posted: 10/25/2013 12:12 pm EDT | Updated: 10/25/2013 12:13 pm EDT




WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid incidents of pets dying from dog treats, the Food and Drug Administration is proposing long-awaited rules to make pet food and animal feed safer.

The rules stem from a sweeping food safety law passed by Congress almost three years ago. Like rules proposed earlier this year for human food, they would focus on preventing contamination before it begins.

The announcement comes as the FDA says it hasn't yet determined a cause of almost 600 dog deaths believed to be linked to pet jerky treats imported from China. The agency has been trying for six years to determine what exactly is causing those illnesses.

The proposed rules would require those who sell pet food and animal feed in the United States — including importers — to follow certain sanitation practices and have detailed food safety plans. All of the manufacturers would have to put individual procedures in place to prevent their food from becoming contaminated.

The rules would also help human health by aiming to prevent foodborne illnesses in pet food that can be transferred to humans. People can become sick by handling contaminated pet food or animal feed.

Michael Taylor, FDA deputy commissioner for foods, said the rules fit together with regulations proposed in July to create better oversight over imported food, including pet foods and animal feed. The idea behind all of the food safety rules is to make businesses more responsible for the safety of the food they are selling by proving they are using good food safety practices. They might do that by documenting basic information about their suppliers' cleanliness, testing foods or acquiring food safety audits. If they fail to verify the food is safe, the FDA could stop shipments of their food.

Currently, the government does little to ensure that companies are trying to prevent food safety problems but generally waits and responds to outbreaks after they happen.

Taylor said the new rules, once they are in place, could be helpful in investigating the jerky treat deaths if those illnesses are still happening. But they still may not be able to solve the mystery because the FDA has not yet been able to determine what ingredients are causing sickness. The rules generally ask manufacturers to focus on certain hazards and do their best to prevent them.

"We are really still trying to find out what the hazard is" in the jerky illnesses, Taylor said.

The FDA said the rule could cost industry $130 million annually to comply. Smaller businesses would have more time to put the rule in place.

The agency will take comments for four months before issuing a final rule and will hold a series of public meetings to explain the proposal.
Post Mon Oct 28, 2013 6:47 am 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

Waging Tail is back on the shelves of Sams. It still says a product of China on the bag! Go further into the aisles and there is an American turkey prodc on the shelves. My pit bulls love it!
Post Mon Mar 03, 2014 9:15 am 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

Nestles has stopped putting the country of origin on the bag! Sam's is still selling the product.
Post Thu Apr 10, 2014 4:34 am 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

Nestles is also the company that declared water is not a basic human right . Therefore, Nestles says it should be privatized.
Post Thu Apr 10, 2014 5:15 pm 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

NaturalNews.com
5 hrs ·
Breaking news: Pet treats found contaminated with toxic heavy metals. Health Ranger releases new laboratory results showing lead, cadmium, mercury at alarmingly high levels in popular pet treats: http://www.naturalnews.com/044795_pet_treats_toxic_heavy_metals_Made_in_China.html

Pet treats found contaminated with heavy metals - Health Ranger releases shocking data on lead,...
Pet treats found contaminated with heavy metals - Health Ranger releases shocking data on lead,...
NATURALNEWS.COM
Post Mon Apr 21, 2014 2:38 am 
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo

(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.

This Real Meat product, shown on the right, is made in the USA and has the following descriptive text on the label:

No added hormones, No antibiotics, No fillers, No coloring, No preservatives, Nothing artificial.

The only ingredients are beef, dried chicory root, vegetable glycerin, sea salt and mixed tocopherols.

While I haven't yet tested all their varieties of pet treats, their beef treats (in the green bag) were remarkably clean of heavy metals. (Keep in mind that the Natural News Forensic Food Labs only tests for heavy metals, not other things. Also, we do NOT take money from companies to test their products. We buy products off the shelf and test them ourselves, entirely without the permission or knowledge of the companies in question.)

Natural News has no relationship of any kind with the Real Meat company.

Beware of pet treats from China
One of the patterns we are seeing in all our testing of foods, superfoods, herbs and pet treats is that products from China are consistently contaminated with high levels of heavy metals.

In almost every category of products we test, the products from China are by far the most heavily contaminated (with India in second place).

So one of the first things you can do to enhance the safety of the pet products you buy is avoid any pet treats made in China and instead seek out pet treats made in your home country such as the USA or Canada.

Why are China-made pet treats so consistently contaminated? Because China is an environmental catastrophe. Environmental laws are almost universally thwarted, and the pollution is so bad across China that producing clean food products in China seems nearly impossible (except in a few remote areas such as the high mountains).

China's industrial contamination has reached such alarming levels that the nation's rivers are literally deadly to bathe in. Dead bodies of humans and animals routinely float down the rivers. Just last year, 220,000 pounds of dead fish had to be scooped out of the Fuhe River after being poisoned to death by a chemical manufacturing plant(3).

Just last week, the city of Lanzhou warned its 3.6 million residents that the city's drinking water was heavily contaminated with cancer-causing benzene and therefore dangerous to drink(4). The pollution was caused, as usual, by the city's chemical manufacturing plants, nearly all of which simply dump toxic waste byproducts directly into rivers or water aquifers. This announcement set off a near-panic among residents who were suddenly left with no drinking water source.

There is no question in my mind that many pet treats manufactured in China are also contaminated with benzenes, pesticides and industrial chemicals. By any reasonable standard, the FDA should ban imports on all pet treats from China until reasonable quality control standards are put in place. Even then, all pet treats (and pet food) imported from China should be tested for contamination before being allowed into the United States.

I also believe that retailers like Amazon.com, PetSmart and local pet retailers should conduct routine testing of the products they sell. (I'm open to offering this service to retailers, by the way, if any are interested. We don't offer testing services to manufacturers, but we would consider offering it to other retailers.)

Click here to see complete pet treat testing results at the Natural News Forensic Food Labs results page.

Legal note for companies that don't like us publishing heavy metals data about their products
We are happy to correct any factual errors in our story, but please don't waste your time trying to sue us for publishing scientifically-validated lab results on your products. Every time we publish laboratory data, we get threatened by someone who doesn't like the fact that we are publicly revealing the heavy metals composition of their products. These people consistently do not seem to understand freedom of the press, the First Amendment and the ease by which such frivolous lawsuits are dismissed in the courts. Every $100,000 that you spend trying to sue us is $100,000 you will flush down the toilet.

There's actually more to it than that: Natural News has a natural immune system: our supporters who also believe in clean food and total transparency! As is obvious from our enormous number of Facebook fans and web traffic statistics, millions of health-conscious consumers have asked me to speak on their behalf on these matters, so I am publicly stating the following message on behalf of all the millions of Natural News fans and readers who love their pets:

If you attempt to silence or intimidate Natural News for publishing accurate laboratory data on your products, your threats will be made public and accompanied by a grassroots boycott campaign against your company and all retailers who carry your product.

We the People of the natural health community simply will no longer tolerate corporate-driven censorship and intimidation attempts against honest journalism conducted in the public interest, and we will respond with a spontaneous, decentralized, peer-to-peer activism campaign to remove your products from the marketplace forever. Clear enough?

On the other hand, if you wish to engage us in a polite discussion about how we might re-test your products as your materials improve, we are more than happy to conduct such tests for you at no charge and share those results with the public. We will never ask you for money to test your products, and we will never alter our test results in exchange for money. We cannot be bought off, which is precisely the reason we are so rare in today's corrupt society (and why we are so popular with health-conscious consumers).

Keep in mind that our goal in publishing these results is not to embarrass your company but to encourage you to do your own heavy metals testing and manufacture cleaner products. We also seek to empower consumers with factual information they can use to make informed purchasing decisions in the best interests of their pets' health.

We believe in CLEAN FOOD. And we are willing to fight for it using every (legal) tool at our disposal, including social media, videos, articles, emails and more.

Watch for more laboratory testing of off-the-shelf products at the Natural News Forensic Food Labs.

Sources for this article include:

(1) http://www.fda.gov/animalveterinary/safetyhe...

(2) http://realmeattreats.com

(3) http://globalnews.ca/news/817930/china-pulls...

(4) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/11/lan...

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About the author: Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is the founding editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet's No. 1 natural health news website, now reaching 7 million unique readers a month.

With a background in science and software technology, Adams is the original founder of the email newsletter technology company known as Arial Software. Using his technical experience combined with his love for natural health, Adams developed and deployed the content management system currently driving NaturalNews.com. He also engineered the high-level statistical algorithms that power SCIENCE.naturalnews.com, a massive research resource now featuring over 10 million scientific studies.

In addition to being the co-star of the popular GAIAM TV series called Secrets to Health, Adams is also the (non-paid) executive director of the non-profit Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), an organization that redirects 100% of its donations receipts to grant programs that teach children and women how to grow their own food or vastly improve their nutrition. Click here to see some of the CWC success stories.

In 2013, Adams created the Natural News Forensic Food Laboratory, a research lab that analyzes common foods and supplements, reporting the results to the public. He is well known for his incredibly popular consumer activism video blowing the lid on fake blueberries used throughout the food supply. He has also exposed "strange fibers" found in Chicken McNuggets, fake academic credentials of so-called health "gurus," dangerous "detox" products imported as battery acid and sold for oral consumption, fake acai berry scams, the California raw milk raids, the vaccine research fraud revealed by industry whistleblowers and many other topics.

Adams has also helped defend the rights of home gardeners and protect the medical freedom rights of parents. Adams is widely recognized to have made a remarkable global impact on issues like GMOs, vaccines, nutrition therapies, human consciousness.

In addition to his activism, Adams is an accomplished musician who has released ten popular songs covering a variety of activism topics.

Click here to read a more detailed bio on Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, at HealthRanger.com.


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