Posts Categorized: Straight Talk
Drugs and chemicals can be hard on the liver. This includes NSAIDS (Non-Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs), heartworm prevention medications, vaccines and topical flea treatments. Some drugs are so hard on the liver that your veterinarian will recommend blood work every three months to verify the liver values are within normal limits.
Milk thistle (Silybum marianum) helps protect the liver. Milk thistle is a plant in the Aster family that has spiny leaves with reddish-purple, thistle shaped flowers.... Read More..
In January of 2011, President Obama signed FSMA reform into law. The FDA’s website explains that the goal is to shift the focus from simply responding to contamination of food to actually preventing it, and this act gives the FDA the power to require prevention-based controls across the industry. The good news is that this reform applies to pet foods as well as human foods.
For the first time, importers have an explicit responsibility to verify... Read More..
Here’s a question.
When you purchase a “Prescription Diet” from your vet clinic or pet food store, do you legally need a prescription?
Here is the scoop.
Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Inc, (makers of Science Diet) got a patent for the name “prescription diet”. Yup, they own it. Competing pet food companies must use a different description on their label, such as “therapeutic diet” or “veterinary diet” to avoid a copyright infringement lawsuit.
A trivia question:
What substance sold at the grocery store is: considered safe, has few or no side effects, has been used in Chinese medicine for over 4000 years, is a powerful anti-oxidant, has been shown to prevent breast cancer from spreading to the lungs in mice, acts as a natural liver detoxifier, has been shown to stop the growth of new blood vessels in tumors, is a natural antiseptic and antibacterial agent, has been shown... Read More..
“It’s safe!” sings the FDA.
They are referring to thimerosal - an incredibly controversial preservative used in vaccines and it contains nearly 50% ethyl mercury.
Thimerosal has been banned from children’s vaccines in several countries including Russia, Denmark, Great Britain, Austria and Japan.
In response to allegations that the ethyl mercury in thimerosal is linked to autism the FDA and CDC (Center for Disease Control) maintain that there is no proof. Ethyl mercury is considered safer than methyl... Read More..
On the morning of January 12, 2009, Clifford Tousignant, a Korean War veteran with 3 purple hearts drew his last breath. Just weeks earlier Shirley Almer, twice a cancer survivor passed away. Her family spent their Christmas in mourning.
The killer was in the peanut butter.
Nine people died and hundreds more were sickened by Salmonella contamination in this outbreak alone.
Federal prosecutors have filed criminal charges against individuals at the now defunct Peanut Corporation of America, and... Read More..
Should I feed my pet people food? - YES!
The powerful pet food industry promotes a discouraging view of dogs and cats being fed human food. TV commercials shamelessly show healthy dogs jumping through the air (apparently elated at getting the perfect kibble) and an entire aisle at the grocery store is devoted to sacks of food with beautiful pictures of steak, eggs and carrots... Yum! Unfortunately, the label doesn’t depict what’s really in the bag.
Some... Read More..
Since September 26, 2007, the FDA has issued repeated warnings regarding jerky treats from China. It wasn’t until January of 2013 that major manufacturers, including Nestle and Del Monte, pulled the suspected products from store shelves. By October of 2013 the FDA received 3600 reports of illness including 580 dog deaths linked to these jerky treats. Most pet deaths and illnesses are not reported to the FDA so the actual number is much higher. Symptoms... Read More..
A shipment of vaccines arrived at our clinic with limited content information, so we called Merial Corporation and asked them to provide it.
“No” was their answer.
Our concern was aluminum.
Without this information the doctor can’t monitor the accumulative amount of aluminum patients are receiving.
Aluminum is a proven neurotoxin that is used as an adjuvant in many vaccines and was shown to be toxic to the nervous tissues in animals as far back as 1885. Since then,... Read More..
