Ethoxyquin: Pesticide In Your Dog’s Food?

One of the deep, dark secrets of many dog food manufacturers is using fish meal preserved with ethoxyquin, a pesticide your dog’s food. They do not have to list it as an ingredient on their dog food bags because they are only required to list ingredients that “they” actually add to the food. It is the fish meal manufacturer that uses ethoxyquin to preserve their fish meal and the dog food manufacturers purchase the fish meal from them. Pretty slick, isn’t it. 

Ethoxyquin was developed by Monsanto in the 50′s and registered as a pesticide in 1965. The EPA has four toxicity classes to classify pesticides. Classes I through III are required to carry a warning on their label. Ethoxyquin falls under Class III for oral, dermal and inhalation which would require it to carry a “caution” label. Do you remember seeing any “caution labels” on any of the dog food bags you’ve read? Because I sure don’t, but yet a huge percentage of dog food manufacturers use fish meal preserved with ethoxyquin in their dog food.

According to the EPA’s own website, ethoxyquin was shown to target the liver and kidneys in experimental animals. It was also associated with contact dermatitis with humans, which ceased when the ethoxyquin was removed from their environment.

For the life of me, I can’t understand why dog food manufacturers would buy fish meal preserved with this pesticide when there are alternatives on the market. No doubt, it has to do with the price and the shelf life.

The good news is, there are some dog food manufacturers that do not use fish meal preserved with ethoxyquin. They choose to pay a little more and buy a safer fish meal for to add to their dog food. If you would like to know what the fish meal they use is preserved with, call and ask them. You should ask if they buy fish meal preserved with ethoxyquin. If they say no, ask them how do they know? Do they test their fish meal? And if so, how often? They will either answer outright or lie and then squirm when you ask the last three questions. Then you will have the manufacturers that tell you they do, but it cooks out in the “heating process”.

Hopefully, as more consumers question dog food companies and show their disapproval, they will be forced to provide us with a safe food for our dogs.

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