Chicken Jerky Treats Harm Dogs

Since 2007, dried chicken jerky treats from China have been sickening and killing dogs The dogs died of kidney failure. The reason jerky caused kidney failure has been elusive, but a new testing method used by NY State Division of Food Safety has found at least one cause: antibiotics.

The NY lab has been testing jerky one strip at a time, where the other state & federal labs had been using homogenized samples. The NY test lab identified 5 different antibiotics in the samples, 4 of which are not allowed in chicken in the US. The fifth antibiotic, sulfaquinoxaline, which is allowed in the US to treat coccidia, was found at concentration higher than acceptable in food products.

Some chicken jerky products involved include 
• Cadet brand Chicken Jerky Treats from IMS Trading Corp
• Chicken Chew and Oinkies Pig Skin Twists wrapped with chicken from Hartz
• Milo’s Kitchen Chicken Jerky and Kitchen Grillers, a DelMonte product
• Publix Chicken Tenders
• Waggin’ Train & Canyon Creek Ranch from Nestle-Purina

Because many pet families have heard about the recall, they’ve started buying products made in Canada and the US rather than imported from China. The difficulty is that it’s hard to tell where a product is actually from. Manufacturers are allowed to say that tenders are a product of the US or Canada if the jerky was packaged in the US or Canada. Thus, Nestle-Purina, Hartz, Publix and other brands can purchase Chinese chicken tenders in bulk and ship them to US and Canada where they are repackaged in small bags and labelled as US or Canadian products.

To avoid the possibility of harming your dog, don’t buy chicken strips unless they are organic and raised in the US. Unfortunately, sweet potato treats are also implicated in pet poisonings, so I recommend that families buy only organic and only when they are sure it is a product from the US or Canada.