A Problem Too Big to Ignore

For a long while, when the topic of microplastics in pet food came up, it was treated as a fringe concern, something only the most cautious worried about. That’s changed. The research has piled up so quickly over the past couple of years that I’ve had trouble keeping up. And I read literature every day. So let’s take a closer look at some recent studies: how much are our pets being exposed to simply by eating their food?

A new peer-reviewed study in Environmental Pollution titled “The Occurrence and Characterization of Microplastics in Dry Pet Food: Investigating Geographical Variations Between European and South American Markets”¹ set out to answer part of that question by comparing pet food brands on opposite sides of the world to see whether this was just a small, localized problem or something bigger.

Dry pet food from both Ecuador and Spain confirmed that contamination was widespread and global, not confined to one country’s manufacturing standards. Loose food sold in bulk had significantly more microplastics than sealed bags. In South America, they found the average dog consumes 500 pieces of microplastics per day; in Spain, about 400 pieces per day from the average bag of dry food.