03/21/07 05:20 PM

My dog Lucky is on the Wellness plan at Banfield Pet Hospital. He receives two blood screenings a year. After the most recent procedure, I received a call from the Veterinarian and he advised me that he needed to speak with me himself.( The assistant usually calls and let’s me know I can pick him up) When I arrived there he gave me the bad news that Lucky is in the early stages of Kidney failure. I’ve been heartbroken ever since. The doctor said it’s only a matter of time and there’s nothing that can be done to stop the process. I was shocked to say the least and started wondering how a dog that’s only five years old could develop such a disease. I started investigating the food and snacks that I was giving him. On the back label of the Chicken Jerky Strips, it read “Irradiated food, Not for Human Consumption” The red flag went up immediately. If somethings not safe for me to eat, then what is in the food that dog’s can somehow tolerate? After reading a multitude of articles on-line that have over 400 scientific studies linking irradiated foods to kidney failure, testicular cancer and a host of other diseases in animals, I wrote to the large retailer where I had been buying them and pleaded with them to stop selling the poisonous food. The Fda ignored most of the studies and chose just four handpicked studies to approve introduction of irradiated food into the United States, most of which come from China. Most interesting is how the process takes place. They use spent nuclear rods to irradiate the food, so in essence you are feeding your dog nuclear waste when you feed them these snacks. Please tell everyone you know to refrain from buying food that has been irradiated. The following article is straight from the Food and Drug Administration’s website. http://WWW.FDA.GOV The Problems of Irradiated Foods
Foods that have heen exposed to ioniz-
ing radiation have second-rate nutri-
tion and ???œcounterheit freshness. Even
at low doses, some irradiated foods
lose 20% of vitamins such as A C, E,
and B complex. Because irradiation
breaks down the food?????s cell walls, ac-
celerated vitamin losses occur during
storage–up to 80%. Ironically, irradia-
tion both creates harmful free radicals
and destroys the antioxidant vitamins
necessary to fight them! When electron
beams are used, trace amounts of ra-
dioactivity may be created. Ionizing radiation knocks electrons out
of atoms and creates free radicals.
These free radicals react with food
components, creating new radiolytic
products, some of which are toxic
(benzene, formaldehyde, lipid perox-
ides) and some of which may he
unique to irradiated foods. No one
knows the long term impact of eating
unknown quantities of these damaged
foods. Studies on animals fed irmdi-
ated foods have shown increased tu-
mors, reproductive failures and kidney failures. Irradiation doesn?????t kill all bacteria;
those that survive are radiation-
resistant. Eventually these bacteria
will require higher doses of radiation.
Irradiation doesn?????t ,kill the bacterium
that causes botulism, or viruses. It can?????t
be used on dairy products, a major
source of food poisoning. Irradiation is not the only option for
providing clean food. Cleaning up
filthy slaughter houses, slowing down
preprocessing lines, increasing the num-
her of federal meat inspectors; and en-
couraging local agriculture wilI lead to long-term
food safety solutions without the risks or irradiation.