The anti-healthy pet food folks are at it again. This time going after friend and fellow pet food consumer advocate Rodney Habib (with a jab at Dr. Karen Becker too!).
Rodney Habib published a video (Facebook) exposing the risk ingredients in five popular dog treats. From Snopes.com: “On 22 March 2016, the Facebook page “Planet Paws” published a video claiming that Milk-Bone dog treats contained a known canine carcinogen, butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA). In just under one week, the video achieved nearly half a million shares and scores more views, causing worry to dog lovers across the social network. On an initial watch, we noticed a brief portion that cited the unreliable health site Mercola. We were unable to substantiate claims that BHA, which is commonly used as a preservative in Milk-Bones (and many other dog treats), posed a risk to pets.”
Snopes.com dismissed the evidence to risk of BHA in pet treats stating (bold added for emphasis): “While “experimental animals” (presumably rats or mice) were mentioned, dogs did not appear in that NIH document.” Snopes.com dismissed the risk to pets consuming BHA because this study was not performed on dogs (though it was performed on animals).
But…to proves the safety of BHA in dog treats Snopes.com cited a human study. “The association between dietary intake of BHA and BHT and stomach cancer risk was investigated in the Netherlands Cohort Study (NLCS) that started in 1986 among 120,852 men and women aged 55 to 69 years …”
Snopes.com feels it is perfectly acceptable to base the safety of a pet food ingredient on human studies, but it’s not acceptable for a consumer advocate to base the risk of a pet food ingredient on animal studies.
And Snopes.com cited the very same veterinarian that attacked our Pet Food Test results – Dr. Jessica Vogelsang – who stated “The “experts” in these videos substitute Google searches and scary sound bites for actual science. They are much better videographers than scientists. In that vein they’re most like the Food Babe of the pet world.”
Just to be clear…
The Center for Science in the Public Interest suggests consumers to “Avoid” BHA. “BHA retards rancidity in fats, oils, and oil-containing foods. While some studies indicate it is safe, other studies demonstrate that it causes cancer in rats, mice, and hamsters. Those cancers are controversial because they occur in the forestomach, an organ that humans do not have. However, a chemical that causes cancer in at least one organ in three different species indicates that it might be carcinogenic in humans.”
The National Toxicology Program, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states: “Carcinogenicity: Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) is reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen based on sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity from studies in experimental animals.”
Personally, I choose to believe that BHA is a cancer risk I’m not willing to take for my pets. I choose to support the truth shared by Rodney Habib and Dr. Karen Becker. I know for fact – both of these individuals work tirelessly to protect pets and to educate pet food consumers. I cannot say the same for Snopes.com and Dr. Jessica Vogelsang.
Snopes.com – you got it wrong.
Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,
Susan Thixton
Pet Food Safety Advocate
Author Buyer Beware, Co-Author Dinner PAWsible
TruthaboutPetFood.com
Association for Truth in Pet Food
What’s in Your Pet’s Food?
Is your dog or cat eating risk ingredients? Chinese imports? Petsumer Report tells the ‘rest of the story’ on over 4000 cat foods, dog foods, and pet treats. 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee. www.PetsumerReport.com
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Kathryn S
March 28, 2016 at 11:15 am
how many years, how many studies and how much $$ did it take for ‘them’ to admit that smoking and the use of tobacco products in general was detrimental to human health? and people still use the products and people still die. Will we/they never learn?
Connie Chauvel-Gomez
March 28, 2016 at 2:32 pm
as with “human” drugs…Big Pharma does NOT want to loose money…a multi-billion dollar business does not want healthy alternatives known. So it goes w/ Pet food…..Purina Hills et. al are in “it” for the Big Bucks!!!!!
zookeeper216
March 29, 2016 at 12:55 am
“It’s a chilling reality – one often overlooked in annual mortality statistics: Preventable medical errors persist as the No. 3 killer in the U.S. – third only to heart disease and cancer – claiming the lives of some 400,000 people each year. At a Senate hearing Thursday, patient safety officials put their best ideas forward on how to solve the crisis.” This was 2014.
Just a thought.
Connie
March 28, 2016 at 11:28 am
“The “experts” in these videos substitute Google searches and scary sound bites for actual science.
and what Snopes did was any better than that?
while I’m not a fan of the Food Babe, she has made changes in big food for the better. Let’s hope Rodney and Dr. Becker are as successful.
Mitch
March 28, 2016 at 11:33 am
Snopes is bought and paid for like Wikipedia… More and more people are realizing that every day… It would be more difficult to discredit them if it weren’t so blatantly obvious, as your example points out
Diane
March 28, 2016 at 11:42 am
Everyone knows snopes is a woman and her husband (very liberal) run from there house. I don’t know anyone that uses them anymore.
Duncan
March 28, 2016 at 12:11 pm
Whoa! What does this have to do with anything?
Silvermane
March 28, 2016 at 12:45 pm
Oh no! Not liberals. When we be able to wipe this scourge with their unsavoury different opinions from the earth?
Pamela Mueller
March 28, 2016 at 1:20 pm
Politics does not belong in this forum about pet food.
Frank
July 14, 2017 at 9:40 am
Liberals want to save the planet and all the creatures on it. Conservatives want to make money and more money. Your call.
Gary Lee
March 28, 2016 at 11:50 am
So is milk bone dog treats bad for dogs
Susan Thixton
March 28, 2016 at 11:54 am
Hi Gary – the ingredients in Milkbone original are: Wheat Flour, Wheat Bran, Meat and Bone Meal, Milk, Wheat Germ, Beef Fat (Preserved with BHA), Salt, Natural Flavor, Dicalcium Phosphate, Calcium Carbonate, Brewer’s Dried Yeast, Malted Barley Flour, Sodium Metabisulfite (Used as a Preservative), Choline Chloride, Minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Manganous Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite), Vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, Vitamin A Supplement, Niacin Supplement, D-Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Folic Acid, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement), BHA (Used as a Preservative).
Meat and Bone Meal is an ingredient that can be sourced (per the legal definition) from non-slaughtered animals. Non-slaughtered animals include dead livestock and euthanized animals. The FDA found this ingredient likely to contain euthanized animals. And the BHA risk is explained in this post.
Dave
March 28, 2016 at 1:05 pm
I stopped reading at the first ingredient… wheat flour. That’s wnough to convince me not to give it to a dog.
Silvermane
March 28, 2016 at 12:42 pm
Hi Gary,
I would say that there isn’t a 100% definitive answer to that question. However, from what science there is available, as Susan noted above, it’s pretty clear that there is great cause for concern. I certainly wouldn’t feed one to my dogs and I don’t recommend any of our customers do. Ultimately, why feed a treat that has any risk of causing harm to your pet when there are so many other fantastic, great quality treats out there? I’ve found that once a dog samples a few Benny Bully’s or Cloud Star Buddy Biscuits or Orijen Freeze Dried, they aren’t too interested in going back to the questionable ingredients and preservatives in Milkbone anyway!
Terri Janson
March 28, 2016 at 11:59 am
I saw the video and saved it to my phone. I will be sharing it!
Ian
March 28, 2016 at 12:10 pm
Yes, from Dr Vogelsang’s own website press kit:
” SERVICES OFFERED
o BookIncentiveCampaignPartnership
o FreelanceWriting
o CustomContentCreation
o WebBannerAdvertisements
o BrandAmbassadorship
o SocialMediaCampaigns”
I wonder who hired her to attack Rodney Habib’s video? I’m guessing someone with a financial interest in the multi-billion dollar pet food market. Just a guess though. Otherwise what personal interest would she have in defending the use of BHA except for being hired by industry to do so?
Jefferson
March 28, 2016 at 2:30 pm
THAT is informative information! Good catch Ian.
Patti
March 28, 2016 at 12:53 pm
This just makes me question ALL Snopes.com investigations now.
sheila
March 28, 2016 at 1:26 pm
I stopped looking towards snopes as well when I found out it was just a husband and wife team doing this research from their home just like any of us could do. Yes it makes a difference to me that they are blatantly liberal leaning as many of their stories they research that have anything to do with liberal politicians or other liberal agendas is always found to be true or false in favor of the liberal. BUT the main reason snopes.Com needs to nlbe snoped themselves is that they are not any kind of authority on the truth. They are just another opinion piece. I would not feed my animals anything that had BHA.
Susan Hayes
March 28, 2016 at 5:22 pm
Keep politics out of this forum! Your post is also “just another opinion piece.”
Sheila
March 28, 2016 at 9:36 pm
Never said it wasn’t my opinion. But thank you Miss forum police….it was in response to what another person posted. I’ll take your demand with a grain of salt. You could have just scrolled past instead of scolding another poster’s opinion.
Kathleen
March 28, 2016 at 2:23 pm
I would hope so! Snope-a-Dope is a front group for all big industry. Are you familiar with front groups/astroturfing. Every large industry creates/hires front groups. For instance, I saw a website that tried to give the appearance of being somewhat natural oriented, but it was only a front to put down raw feeding. You have to understand that sometimes these front groups will give a little truth so that they can better accomplish their ultimate agenda. Here is medical investigative reporter, Sharyl Attkisson at her TED talk explaining how front groups work.
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2016/01/15/journalist-reveals-tactics-brainwashing-industry-uses-to-manipulate-the-public/
ACH
March 28, 2016 at 2:56 pm
Kathleen, thank you so much for posting the link…I just watched and shared it…I hope people will pay attention…
Hilary Olson
March 28, 2016 at 10:43 pm
When you have facts that have been proven by scientific process by qualified people with the methods and results for all to see then conversation should ensue. I find very little conversation offered by groups known to me as mudslingers .Outlandish statements based on misrepresented and misunderstood information offered as fact with motive Its upsetting on many levels but I say leave the mudslinging to the mudslingers. One day maybe they will feed their beloved pet something harmful they thought was good. hopefully not as the consequences can be life threatening.
David M.
March 28, 2016 at 1:38 pm
Snopes used to be a husband and wife site, but now the wife (Barbara) is nowhere to be found. It is now David and a couple of 20-something paid writers who do minimal “research” and post sloppily-written articles. The site is more about driving traffic, click-bait, and riding on the coattails of what the site used to be. Snopes has been around so long that Google doesn’t seem to realize the difference between old Snopes and new Snopes, and it ranks #1 for almost everything they post. These amaetur writers can squeeze out shoddy 300-word posts, much of which is merely “quoted” from other sites, and – because of domain authority – out-SEO far better written articles by newer sites without the domain authority that Snopes has.
Hoping that one day Panda wipes the smug grin off of the faces of the lecherous staff at Snopes.
ACH
March 28, 2016 at 1:39 pm
That’s the absolute end of Snopes for me! And Wikipedia, too…I know for a fact from personal family information that they don’t always tell the truth and don’t have all the facts…they definitely cannot be trusted…
THANK YOU SO MUCH, SUSAN, FOR THE AWESOME, AWESOME WORK YOU DO ON BEHALF OF OUR PETS!!! YOU ARE SO APPRECIATED!!!
John Huff
March 28, 2016 at 2:15 pm
We think Snopes needs to Snoped. Never believed them anyhow. Garbage in – Garbage out.
Marsha
March 28, 2016 at 2:49 pm
When I took a class on things that should be taken very lightly if at all was Snopes.com. We were informed that it is not always the correct answers. So we should not even bother to use it. He stated it gives wrong or mostly wrong information. i have not used that site in years. As far as treats, we make our own with Purdue chicken.
Christine
March 28, 2016 at 2:56 pm
Don’t forget – BHA is actually banned in Japan and many European countries. That counts for something when I consider the safety of any ingredient.
Ann Cluck
March 28, 2016 at 3:00 pm
I buy none of the more “popular” mass-produced dog treats. I pay more to insure the safety of my furbabies. All natural for them!!!
Aurora Clarke
March 28, 2016 at 6:37 pm
Snopes know NOTHING about feeding pets – I ready a decade ago that they were simply a husband and wife team who were good at using search engines like Google. They set up their web site to dispel myths and urban legends that proliferated on the Internet as well as the chain email with dire outcomes if you did not forward. Now they claim to be experts of sort on many topics when in truth they are not, not at all just good at googling!
Aurora Clarke
March 28, 2016 at 6:38 pm
that would be “I read a decade ago”
Jane
March 28, 2016 at 7:29 pm
I saw the quote from Milk Bone in the Snopes article saying how they follow FDA and AAFCO rules. LMAO! Maybe true, but we already know AAFCO and FDA do not enforce the rules, so anything goes, and they don’t care!!! Plus Snopes quotes a study in 2000 published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology stating, “In this study, no significant association with stomach cancer risk was found for usual intake of low levels of BHA and BHT.”
Seriously, who does the research there? As easily as they found info to support their theory, I found as of 2016, The National Toxicology Report, part of NIH, concludes “… (BHA) is reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen based on sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity from studies in experimental animals.” Dogs are animals I believe, so likely BHA is a carcinogen for them. I also found numerous articles, as mentioned in Christine’s comment (4 above this) about Europe and Japan banning BHA and BHT because of safety concerns. USA is not the ultimate authority on everything.
At MOST Snopes could say the safety of BHA is questionable or unknown. Their bias and misrepresentation of available information on the internet really irritates me. Snipes, Milkbone, Get it right!
Laurie Matson
March 28, 2016 at 11:23 pm
Big Pet Feed probably paid the Snopes people big bucks to publish that piece!!! Money talks these days!!!
Linda Macfarlane
March 29, 2016 at 10:40 am
I believe what Snopes.com is responding to (and it plainly shows it when you access this response in Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/milk-bone-facebook-warning/), is the claim that “Milk-Bone dog treats cause cancer in one of every two dogs that eat them,” and based on that, it IS ridiculous and false. There is no evidence ANYWHERE that indicates Milk-Bone dog treats would cause cancer in 50% of the dogs they were fed to! Why would anyone claim that?! It just makes the author look like an idiot.
I sent Snopes.com a message asking them to amend the response to show that although the statement about ‘1 out of 2 dogs’ is indeed false, there IS evidence BHA is a carcinogenic for animals AND humans. I don’t expect anything to come of my request, but figured I would speak up, anyway.
You can’t judge Snopes.com based on their response to this claim, because based on the substance of that claim, they are right! I have found Snopes.com to be a valuable resource (in addition to others), for doing quick and easy fact-checking on ridiculous crap that is circulated via Facebook, email, etc., and will continue to utilize this website in the future.
Susan Thixton
March 29, 2016 at 10:51 am
The video didn’t make the claim “Milk-Bone dog treats cause cancer in one of every two dogs that eat them,” – so nothing within the video was false. That statement was what they were validating, not the video. Snopes should have made that clear. I didn’t feel like they did, in fact it appeared to me they felt BHA was/is safe (based on a human study, not an animal study).
Linda Macfarlane
March 30, 2016 at 8:52 am
I agree and that’s why I sent Snopes a message suggesting they amend that Response to state that there IS evidence BHA is a carcinogen for people AND animals. We’ll see if they respond to that – I’ll let you know if they do.
Susan Thixton
March 30, 2016 at 9:22 am
Thanks Linda – yes, please let us know.
Donna
April 14, 2016 at 11:28 am
I say just make the treats yourself. That way you know that they are healthy and free from preservatives. I fed my dog all of the treats listed in the video at hand and he developed cancer AND developed seizures! My sister in law fed her dog the same treats too and her dog developed cancer as well. Seems good enough reasons to me to make my own. These companies will do ANYTHING to selll their products. Oh! And BTW, Old Roy dog food is the WORST pet food on the market. I fed it to my dog and wnded up at the vet hospital having to get his ass cleaned out twice because he was clearly in alot of pain! Vet told me never to buy that crap again for him.
Liz
April 18, 2016 at 11:59 pm
When a veterinarian finally resorts to telling you that a specific brand of dog food is bad, you KNOW it’s bad! ? Most vets I’ve learned are hesitant to name brands of food they think are good or bad. They use terms like “high quality” instead. ? Note–most store brand dog food has poor quality control and I would never trust it.
Hope your dog is all healed up and enjoying healthy food now??
James Colquhoun
February 23, 2017 at 12:55 pm
My 10 year old rottweiler has Osteosarcoma (bone cancer) and I’ve been treating him with cannabis oil for over a year now. The oil works amazing for him and within 10 minutes of taking the oil he wants to eat, drink, and then go outside and go for a good healthy poop. He get”s about 5mg of home made cannabis oil with a 1:1 ratio of CBD:THC. I’ve informed my local vets of what I am doing and they’re quite impressed.
He also has had hip dysplasia since he was a year old and cannot go further than about a block when going for a walk. However since I started giving him the cannabis oil a year ago I basically cured of of his chronic hip disease!
I strongly believe he got the cancer from eating 2-3 large size milk bones a day for the past 8 years. Look up Cannabis Saves Live on Youtube; that’s my channel! 😀