In the December 2018 issue of Petfood Industry magazine, this column covered the topic of non-nutritional minerals en masse. A few of the individual elements like arsenic merit additional discussion, not because they are more prominent or riskier but because they seem to get coverage by critics and the media more frequently. Their position is generally that mere presence equates to danger; however, arsenic is a much more complicated story than just its mere presence in the food.
First, it must be understood that arsenic is a naturally occurring element and not added to the food by pet food companies intentionally. Rather, arsenic is the 20th most common element in the earth’s crust. It occurs in more than 200 different forms, some as inorganic mineral salts and some as organic complexes. Because of its reactivity and flexibility, arsenic has many uses — as a coloring agent for glass, a wood preservative, an herbicide/pesticide and in medicine from coccidiostat to leukemia treatment.
