Experts are warning pet parents to throw out certain pet foods made in China. Noting that China has much lower safety standards for human food, experts are warning some of the pet foods coming out of the country are even more dangerous, even lethal.
Four products they have warned, in particular include rawhide, jerky treats, animal feed and moist pet food. Rawhide bones from China are highly processed and made with many chemicals. They are produced using an acid and bleaching solution. Experts warn they are not digestible and can cause severe obstruction to the pet. If this obstruction is intestinal blockage, the pet will require emergency surgery.
The lax regulations of China make potential poisoning of the pet even more possible. Chemicals in rawhide include mercury, arsenic, formaldehyde and chromium. Jerky pet treats have been the subject of many complaints to PetSmart. Between 2007 and 2014 the retailer received more than 4,800 complaints of pet illnesses.
The US Food and Drug Administration also began receiving a significant amount of complaints about Chinese-made jerky in 2007. In addition, more than 1,000 dog deaths have been attributed to jerky which was made in China. In 2015, PetSmart finally stopped selling jerky made in China.
Pet owners need to be particularly careful because some packages will say they are manufactured in the United States, though they will have been made in China. While their true country of origin will be printed on the package it may be hard to find. Animal feed from China tends to contain plastics. One of these plastics is melamine. Added by companies to boost protein content and save on expenses, those savings are used to buy more expensive ingredients.
Melamine was at the heart of a Chinese nation-wide panic over tainted milk powder which killed six infants and made thousands more sick. Side effects of ingesting this include kidney stones, chronic kidney inflammation and bladder cancer.
The highest concentrations of melamine have been found in pig and cow feed, according to experts. This practice was started a decade ago and is carried out in making various kinds of feed, including feed for cattle, sheep, poultry, pig and even fish.
The danger, of course is once the melamine-tainted feed is ingested by the animals it will eventually get into human consumers. Moist pet food in cans made in China have also been responsible for killing many pets. At least 10 pets, their deaths linked to food from among 40 known pet food brands.
One Canadian company, Menu Foods recalled 60 million cans and packages of moist pet foods as many of these are believed to have caused kidney failure in pets. Chinese companies are known to use tainted ingredients, such as bad wheat gluten as an ingredient in moist pet food.
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