Lead also shows up frequently in pet foods, even if they are made from livestock meat and bone meal, simply as a result of our environment. A paper from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, titled "Lead in Animal Foods," had two frightening conclusions. First, a 9-pound cat is ingesting more lead daily than what is considered potentially toxic for children. Second, since some commercially prepared pet and laboratory animal foods routinely contain lead, feeding these preparations to laboratory animals could add a significant, uncontrolled variable to experiments and may lead to uncertain experimental results (James G. Fox, et al., Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Vol. 1, 1976).

One last word of caution, not for pets this time but for their owners: meat and bone meal from sources not fit for human consumption has found its way into poultry feed. This means that the animal products rendered under questionable conditions are being fed to birds that may wind up on your table. Remember this when you are eating your next piece of chicken or turkey. I have to add, however, that the bone meal sold as a calcium supplement is from carcasses graded for human consumption; it is not from condemned animals.

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