Triclosan (TCS): an example of how pet food manufacturers risk the health of our cats

It is time for commercial pet food manufacturers to be more concerned about how their products can harm domestic cats. There are too many instances of sloppy manufacturing which hints at a poor attitude by the manufacturers towards pet health.

Here is an innocuous example. You wouldn’t give it a second thought unless and until you read and think about it. It concerns yet another chemical: Triclosan (TCS) which is used in many areas of product manufacture both for pets and humans. It reduces the growth of bacteria and fungus on products. In short it increases the life of these products which makes them easier to handle and transport and improves the profit margins of big business. It always comes down to money and when the focus is too heavily on profit something has to give and it is often pet health.

Triclosan is incorporated into plastic pet food bag liners and plastic meat and poultry wrapping. The chemical can end up in pet food. It is reported that it can cause colonic inflammation, increased colitis and in tests it ‘exacerbates colitis associated colon cancer in mice’. It may cause IBD in cats. IBD is on the increase in cats. Chronic exposure and ingestion of TCS can ‘contribute to skin, thyroid problems and food allergies’.

Food allergies are a mysterious and a difficult to resolve problem. They cause untold misery in cats.

Dr Michael Fox says that the packaging containing TCS can be left in place when discarded meat and poultry parts are processed.

Telephone the manufacturer?

On the positive side Dr Fox says that TCS is not present in dry pet food plastic liners or those for frozen pet foods. However, Susan Thixton says that you’ll have to contact the cat food manufacturer to check if TCS is in dry food bag liners and frozen food liners. I would doubt whether anyone would do this. You can imagine the practical difficulties in phoning a large business and asking the receptionist if their bags contained TCS. Ten phone calls later and you might be a step nearer to an answer but I’d doubt it. The brick wall would go up.

It just isn’t good enough. And as a postscript, TCS is found everywhere in the seas just like microbeads (from plastic based clothing such as fleeces). We are poisoning the seas and the planet with damn chemicals and it comes back to us and our pets. Even at the bottom of deep oceans you’ll find microplastic fragments from fleeces and other clothing inside molluscs and other wildlife.