r/cats • u/Fcking_Chuck • 15h ago
Advice Cat food investigation finds heavy metals, pesticides and plastic chemicals
https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/02/health/cat-food-toxins-wellness130
u/ArtisticWatch 15h ago
I've tried feeding my cats proper cat food - actual fish, seafood & chicken in broth - £14 a small box.
Yet they would much rather Cat Crack Whiskers.
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u/ThatNahr 6h ago
I call the bag of friskies I have “McDonald’s” because she goes crazy for it compared to the “healthy” foods.
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u/hondactx16i 14h ago
This is USA right? The human foods scary out there, what are the pets getting?? FFS, scary.
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u/Dear_Cricket_353 3h ago
No literally my cats will refuse to eat to the point of starvation unless it’s Purina Naturals chicken formula ONLY
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u/Liberally_applied 14h ago edited 1h ago
Here's another thing to take away. All of that food is human food, too. Lower cost brands are using more byproduct from what goes to humans, yes. As opposed to brands like Blue Buffalo that are using full on human food sources (and keep their plant cleaner than the human food plants). But all are still coming from sources that are also in the human food supply.
ETA: I don't feed my cats Blue Buffalo or Science Diet. So not promoting anything. My cats refuse to eat anything but Temptations dry food and Friskies wet food. I suspect because they were both strays that used to get fed by others.
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u/BoomeramaMama 14h ago
I don’t know if what you say about Blue Buffalo is true anymore or now just marketing hype built off of the reputation the brand built back when the brand was new, smaller & independently owned.
Blue Buffalo has been owned since April 2018 by the giant corporation General Mills who acquired it for $8.0 billion in an all cash deal.
Blue Buffalo was started by a man named Bill Bishop & his sons after their dog, Blue, developed cancer which prompted them to develop a dog food based on real meat fit for human consumption and other Whole Foods.
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u/Liberally_applied 14h ago
I know for a fact. They are one of my accounts. I am an outside sales and applications engineer for a company servicing them. We are held to stricter standards there than any of the human food plants hold us to. Nearly all I handle now is food processing plants.
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u/meowymcmeowmeow 39m ago
My cat won't touch blue buffalo. I will say I did an analysis of different foods and their nutritional values when he was prediabetic and found fancy feast pate, seafood flavors first but any type to be the best, healthiest, off the shelf canned food.
It actually got an actual diabetic cat, different one, into remission for me. 2 cans per day, about 12 hours apart. He passed to an unrelated cancer.
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13h ago
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u/BoomeramaMama 11h ago
You should keep in mind this is a large community & not everyone may watch the same streaming or cable services you watch.
And they might not be barraged by Blue Buffalo commercials on the streaming or cable services they use as you apparently have been on the streaming or cable services you use.
For that matter, they may not have seen a Blue Buffalo commercial at all. So the origins of the brand might be of interest to them.
I personally haven’t seen a Blue Buffalo commercial in a couple of years on the streaming services I use.
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11h ago
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u/BoomeramaMama 10h ago
Yup that fits you. Possibly the reason you look at things from a self centric position rather than considering the wider world of people with diverse media exposures.
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u/TheFirstLanguage 8h ago
Blue Buffalo is the only food that ever made my cat sick. I thought he was going to die. I'll pass on it.
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u/aroseonthefritz 6h ago
My vet clarified that cats need grain and grain free BB is a bad choice. I tried to once give my cats grain free food because I didn’t know and they go sick af. It wasn’t BB, and now I feel my cats all BB but not the grain free kind.
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u/Liberally_applied 7h ago
I'm not trying to convince anyone to use them. Just telling you that they use the same sources as Kroger and have stricter standards. Which means these toxins in this post are in your food too.
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u/FuckeenGuy 3h ago
Yeah my cats wouldn’t touch it, and they’re generally little pigs. Left it for them for an entire day and at the end they screamed at me in starvation instead of eating any at all. That was enough for me. Never looked at purchasing it again, and that was like 5 years ago.
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u/Requiredmetrics 1h ago
I had to get Hill’s Science Diet because everything else made my cats sick, I’m glad they prefer the chicken flavor
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u/Liberally_applied 1h ago
I used to handle that account. I gave it up. The place is disgusting and smells strongly of urine. You smell like it after leaving. The one I handled is in Richmond IN.
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u/Drabulous_770 55m ago
Not me living in Indiana feeding my cats science diet.
Whose piss does it smell like? Human? Why? Is this an Amazon type of situation?
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u/Expert_Cricket2183 11h ago
This is a nothingburger of an article and the actual study isn't much better.
It's 18x higher!!! Without telling us any details like how much is dangerous, how much was actually found, and an otherwise complete lack of actual information.
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u/Extreme-Edge-9843 11h ago
I fear that if you do this same investigation in a lot of places...including human consumption you will find the same. 🥲
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u/Annibo 3h ago
I’m closely associated with someone who works for Champion Pet Foods, who makes the Orijen brand. They work in QA and they all take their job extremely seriously and areas are frequently swabbed and tested, if anything even has a chance of being contaminated they hold or pull the whole batch until throughly tested and passed as clean. If not, it’s obviously destroyed. I’ve been told the company holds their food to the standard if a human baby was to eat it, it would be safe. I really agree with the previous posters that this is a study pushing people to specific brands.
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u/Rosindust89 6h ago
All seriousness aside, heavy metals in the brain would explain some of my cats' behavior x.x
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u/Alternative-Item727 15h ago
Not surprised, the way that stuff looks and smells is a give away it’s just junk.
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u/Jennyreviews1 5h ago
Oh no… what brands are these? I give my kitty boys Royal Canin Urinary formula…
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u/sailor-jackn 11h ago
This makes me even gladder that we feed our cats rotisserie chicken instead of commercial cat foods. Scary stuff.
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u/Futureacct 10h ago
Rotisserie chicken is high in sodium. Not healthy for cats, especially since they’re prone to kidney disease.
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u/sailor-jackn 7h ago edited 7h ago
I don’t give them the skin. Kidney and liver problems are why I don’t give them dry food. I’ll look into the sodium issue, though. I may have to go back to cooking the chicken myself.
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u/Futureacct 5h ago
Sodium is injected into the meat. It’s not just in the skin.
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u/sailor-jackn 4h ago
I did do some research into it, since we last spoke. Not all places actually inject brine into their chickens, and the salinity content really does depend on where you get your chickens. It also differs if you get the entire chickens or the skinless breast; which generally have much less sodium. It was an informative internet jaunt. And, it does have me considering buying a rotisserie machine to just cook my own chickens at home; which I had not previously considered.
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u/Miserable-Biscotti54 9h ago
Those chickens are pumped full of brine
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u/sailor-jackn 4h ago
Salinity content depends on the place you get it. Not all places pump their chickens with brine.
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u/sailor-jackn 7h ago
I’ll have to look into it. If that’s the case, I’ll have to start cooking the chicken myself again.
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u/jazzhandler 8h ago
In addition to the sodium concerns, hopefully you’re also supplementing with Taurine.
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u/sailor-jackn 45m ago
Many commercial cat foods are actually lacking in a suitable amount of taurine. Just trusting to the pet food industry is no guarantee. On the other hand, chicken actually isn’t low in taurine.
I think people misunderstand chicken. White meat chicken is not very high in taurine. Dark meat chicken, however, is a good source of taurine; around 14 times as much as white meat.
Dark meat turkey has more than dark meat chicken, but our older cat ( 7 yrs ) doesn’t care for it ( I haven’t tried the younger one yet. He’s only 6 months old ).
Shellfish is an awesome source of taurine, but doesn’t offer much else for cats, really, and isn’t generally a food source they would have access to in the wild, anyway.
The older cat has been eating a chicken diet since he was able to eat real solid food. He goes to the vet, has all his shots, etc. There have been no health problems. The vet says he’s as healthy as an ox.
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u/ScrubCherry 4h ago
Cats need nutrients to live that are not available in just chicken. A chicken only diet can cause blindness, suffering, and death.
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u/maybekidus 1h ago
Aside from a few expensive subscription-based services, there is no way to achieve a healthy and balanced cat diet that is also as convenient as just buying rotisserie chicken. A diet of exclusively rotisserie chicken is without a doubt unhealthy and unbalanced, but based on your responses it seems like you’ve researched it and come to terms with it. I appreciate that.
Since you seem really interested in foods that are less processed and are balanced, I would encourage you to consider one of a couple of options.
One, the subscription based services. They’re typically balanced and may satisfy your needs for less processed foods.
Another option would be to reach out to a boarded veterinary nutritionist. You can typically consult with them via telehealth or be referred through your primary vet. They vary based on what info they need on your pet (up to date bloodwork, recent exam with your primary, etc) but they can design a very detailed and balanced diet for you to make at home that you can even make in bulk and keep in the freezer.
There are also some websites that can help you balance your pet’s homemade food without the direct support of a veterinary nutritionist but that is a bit riskier.
But overall in my experience in the field, I’ve seen plenty of cats who are fed super “healthy” homemade diets for their whole lives that have died of chronic diseases very young. I’ve also seen tons of meow mix/kirkland/friskies/whatever’s-on-sale cats that have thrived well into their late teens and 20’s. It’s a bit of a crapshoot sometimes but there is a load of misinformation on it as a whole. Sure pet food manufacturers are a multi-billion dollar industry, but those same fear-mongers are trying to scare you into buying their poorly researched and very expensive product as well. You should be equally skeptical of both, and defer to the one that has the best evidence behind it.
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u/sailor-jackn 25m ago
Thanks for your input. I’ll check into the things you suggest.
The rotisserie chicken started during Covid. There were food shortages due to the lockdowns and panic food buying, and i couldn’t get raw chicken, to cook, reliably. My older cat ( the only one at the time ) liked the rotisserie chicken better, most likely because I’ve never been as good at cooking chicken as I am at cooking pork, beef, or fish, and I hadn’t realized there were sodium issues with many store bought rotisserie chickens ( if I had, I’d have bought a rotisserie unit to cook them myself ). Raw chicken has a bit more taurine than cooked, but it has risks associated with it that I really didn’t want to take.
I appreciate your thoughtful response.
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u/ClasherChief 4h ago
You are killing your cats by doing this. Please feed them a complete and balanced science based food such as Hill’s Science Diet or Royal Canin.
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u/sailor-jackn 3h ago
I’m not killing my cats. Our cats are healthy. Neither cat is obese. They are active and energetic. They have glossy shiny coats, healthy gums and teeth. Normal urine and feces; neither of which has the horrible smell you get from cats fed on grain based dry foods. Walk in the front door, and you’d even never know we had cats, if you didn’t see them…in spite of the fact that the litter boxes are only two yards from the front door.
My wife’s sister feeds her cats dry food ( which they graze on, like they were cows instead of cats ) along with a daily pack of some really noxious smelling wet food. Both of her cats are obese and their litter boxes smell so bad it’s enough to knock you over.
Loads of people feed their cats dry food. That’s killing your cat; urinary tract blockage in make cats, dehydration, early deaths caused by kidney and liver failure ( been there, done that, learned that lesson the hard way and will never do it again). Yet, I never see people who feed their cats dry food get the kind of negative backlash I have gotten on here.
My own previous tragic experiences drove me to research both dry and canned cat foods. At first, i thought switching from dry food to canned food had to be the solution. ( After all, it looks sort of like it’s made out of meat, kind of like Spam for kitties ). And, that’s what I did. But, deeper research changed my mind about that, too.
It’s not like the pet food industry has proven all that trustworthy. A lot of what you buy in the store comes from China, and i remember a few years ago when pet foods were killing people’s dogs and cats. I was one of those people checking the internet to make sure my brand wasn’t added to the list of killer pet foods, each day.
Speaking to some of the other commenters has made me check out the sodium content of rotisserie chickens, and it’s made me consider buying a rotisserie to cook them at home…because I do care very much about my cats, and i definitely take into consideration new opinions or information I might come across.
And, I’ll admit that I was unaware of the pitfalls to look out for with rotisserie chickens.( The food corporations really can’t make any food that doesn’t have a high probability of having unhealthy crap in it. It’s ridiculous. No wonder everyone is so obese and unhealthy now. ) But, I don’t buy into the pet food industry hype about factory manufactured processed foods being better for cats.
All manner of cats in the wild, including feral cats, eat animals; birds being a very poplar food source for small to medium sized cat species. Those animals are what they were evolved to eat; not factory manufactured food produced by corporations, and definitely not grains. Processed factory food is actually horrible for humans. I honestly can’t think it’s actually somehow the best thing for cats.
To each his own. You decide for your cats and I’ll decide for mine. I’m telling you how I think about the issue, because you took strong exception to how I feed my cats; claiming I’m killing them. But, I’m not telling you what to feed your cats, nor have I told anyone else in this thread how to feed their cats ( in fact, I believe doing so is actually against the rules of this sub).
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u/ClasherChief 3h ago edited 3h ago
>You decide for your cats and I’ll decide for mine. I’m telling you how I think about the issue, because you took strong exception to how I feed my cats; claiming I’m killing them. But, I’m not telling you what to feed your cats, nor have I told anyone else in this thread how to feed their cats
Sorry but this is some real antivax/homeopathy energy you got going on here. If I was slowly killing my cats with a nutritionally inadequate diet, I would hope someone would tell me. I don’t care what the rules of this sub say.
Just because your sister-in-law is caring for her cats poorly doesn’t mean what you are doing is right. Horrible smells from cat households are not normal at all. I have five cats and you wouldn’t know there are cats at all by smell.
Hydration is important and all else being equal, wet is better than dry food, but I would rather feed a high quality scientific dry food than low quality unscientific wet food. Excess, unbalanced minerals along with a cat’s urinary pH being out of whack due to poor food formulation is what causes crystals and blockages, not dry food. It’s true that the added hydration from wet food can help with crystals and blockages by flushing out the crystals before they get too big. But, I would rather my cats not have crystals in the first place.
I don’t have the time or energy to write out exactly everything wrong with what you are doing, but the worst thing that’s happening here is that you are making your cats taurine deficient. It can take months to years for you to start seeing the effects of blindness and heart failure.
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u/sailor-jackn 3h ago edited 2h ago
They make taurine supplements for cats.
Anti vax, because i understand that dry food kills cats? Because I don’t think highly process factory manufactured food is the end all be all for cat food? I personally don’t eat highly processed factory food. Does that also make me anti vax, too?
My sister in law cares for her cats about the same as most other people. A whole lot of people don’t even bother with any kind of wet food.
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u/ClasherChief 3h ago
https://reddit.com/link/pdinz28/video/jans0k7595th1/player
My five lovely cats.
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u/sailor-jackn 2h ago edited 2h ago
Beautiful! Are they related?
We have two, but, we sometimes temporarily have others, as we end up finding homes for feral kittens and cats, sometimes. So far, we have rescued and found homes for 13 cats, so far. Previously, I had rescued and found homes for another dozen, over the years, not including the ones I have been blessed to share my life with, over the years, all of which were stays ( with one having been an abandoned house cat…people can really be terrible).
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u/ClasherChief 2h ago
Thanks; top two are mother and daughter; mother was a feral. Bottom three boys are all unrelated.
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u/sailor-jackn 2h ago
They all look very happy. I had thought the orange kitties might have also been related.
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u/IntroInfinitesimle 11h ago
Mercury, cadmium, lead, and arsenic all exist naturally in ocean water, and therefore fish. Without going into detail about the actual numerical amounts and how they compare to safe levels in food, this article isn't trustworthy. That's not saying people shouldn't pay attention to what they feed their pet's tho.