My budgie saphy

[Pajarita]

Well, let's not panic. Rice is actually VERY nutritious and there are varieties that are much lower in arsenic than others while, at the same time, 10 times more nutritious. Like red and black rice grown in California, for example. They have the lowest levels of arsenic of all the rices grown in USA (and even the regular brown rice grown in the 'bad' states -Texas, Louisiana, etc- which are the highest in arsenic have not been found to have levels that are dangerous -not that I would use them, mind you!. The colored rices are loaded with antioxidants -black rice is actually a dark purple and it has the same antioxidant as blueberries and red rice gets its color from anthocyanin, an excellent antioxidant!

[seagoatdeb]

Almost all the stats of these rices are from 2012, so they are not even current. Even the low arsenic rice is higher than any other food in Arsenic. Fruit juices are the second highest in Arsenic unless they are from certified organic sources. The probem with rice is uptakes more arsenic than anything else. But its the use of arsenic based pesticides that is the main cause of this problem and it is not going away but gets worse each year. Many people have it in their ground water too. So if your tap water has arsenic, then the arsenic from Rice can make it much worse. I dont risk either myself or my birds on Rice, there are plenty of other nutritious safer food out there. The other thing that is scary is as soon as they find out all rice is contaminated they raise the bar on what they consider safe. What they consider safe is based on how may will contract cancer from that level of Arsenic. They accept a certain level of increased cancer and call it safe.

[Pajarita]

Yes, they are from 2012 because that's when the 'arsenic in rice scare' happened. Once they determined that the levels were not dangerous to people, the scare faded away (it was the same thing with the fruit juices and it happened at, more or less, the same time). It's actually the water that causes rice to have higher than normal arsenic levels. Rice grows in water so it accumulates more than other foods.

Decisions on what to eat ourselves and what to feed our animals are always personal but, in my personal opinion, one needs to find a practical median about these things because, otherwise, we would end up eating a couple of things and nothing else... so I use only black, red and wild rice from Lundberg's, a family-owned, ecologically-friendly farm which grows their grains in California and which are not only highly nutritious but have also consistently shown the lowest levels of arsenic of all the rices available commercially.

[seagoatdeb]

You need to do more research, the Rice continues to have high levels. What contaminates it is accumualting and yes it is because rice is in patties and because it accumualtes more. Everything is getting more polluted, rice has much more arseninc. It is not a scare, it is reality. It was 2012 that they found it in some rice and began to find it all over the world in varying levels. You can choose to feed your birds and yourself arsenic, its your choice.

[seagoatdeb]

Here are some links to help know how to reduce arsenic in the rice you have and which ways rice uptake is more dangerous. Also we dont know how much rice is at too high a level for our parrots so they may be getting irrreversable poisoning at levels we can get out of our systems. I wont take the chance with my parrots love them to much.

http://www.newsmax.com/Health/Headline/ ... id/651873/

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2015/07/ ... s-arsenic/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 144646.htm

[Pajarita]

The last two links are about the same thing, namely, how to reduce arsenic levels by percolating the rice which, of course, I don't think any of us could do in a practical way I do rinse it and I do use a lot of water and then drain (I do the same thing with the grains) so I am already doing what reduces levels by 30% - this added to the fact that I only use Lundberg's, the brand that tests lowest, satisfies me that I am not feeding my birds arsenic, as you so quaintly put it.

[seagoatdeb]

On a very paractical note here is what to keep in mind.

1. All studies to date are only on the short term affects of inorganic arsenic. So they dont even know the long term affects on humans yet.

2. There are no studies on the affect of inorganice arsenic on parrots even in the short term.

3. inorganic arsenic is more toxic than organic is and inorganic arsenic is used in pesticies becaue it is very toxic to all pests

This is why I wont use it anymore. Its up to everyone to decide what is best for them.

[Pajarita]

Well, they've been monitoring and studying its effect on humans (there are not studies on ANYTHING when it comes to parrots so all we can do is extrapolate on this as we do on anything else) since 1991 (and they increased the testing in 2011) so, although we are not talking 40 years worth, we do know what the effects of long term exposure to high dosages are (higher rates of skin, bladder, and lung cancers, as well as heart disease). And none of the rices was found to have levels that were actually toxic, only higher than what anybody expected. Here's the USDA data on it: http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnes ... 319870.htm

[seagoatdeb]

The aricle you just posted says it is only in a level not to cause immediate and short term, here is the quote from your article."FDA Statement on Testing and Analysis of Arsenic in Rice and Rice Products
The levels FDA found in its testing are too low to cause immediate or short-term adverse health effects. FDA’s work going forward will center on long-term risk and ways to manage it with a focus on long-term exposure.' Anyway, everyone should make there own choice since there is no data on how bad inorganic arsenic at these levels wil affect birds. There are so many other healthy alternatives, I havent missed taking rice out of our diets.

[Pajarita]

Correct. They are working on pinpointing with more accuracy what is a truly safe level as well as making the long term longer but then, this can be said of anything dietary nowadays, right? I mean, lots and lots of things we thought we knew about are turning up that we did not so all we can do is keep on trying -which is what the USDA is doing. I mean, if one goes by what is best, one would have to become an expert nutritionist, eat only what one can grow on soil that is perfectly 'clean' (impossible in USA!), raise and butcher our own animals, etc. But, as this is impossible for most of us, we need to play the hand that is dealt to us and find the practical mediam... what else can we do? Aside from this, for all we know, we were consuming much higher levels of arsenic before the test results came out!

Now, the point I am trying to make is that, in reality, the results were not really as bad as the media made them appeared to be. Let's see if I can put this into a perspective that it's easier to understand by giving you actual figures. The strictest and lowest levels considered safe for human consumption are for water and they are 10 micrograms per liter (food levels are actually higher and, in underdeveloped nations -believe or not! they use up 130 micrograms per day per adult ). Now, the USDA found levels of 3.5 to 6.7 micrograms per cup of rice (which is, I would say, pretty much what an adult would consume a day, right?) These levels can be reduced by 30% if you rinse the rice under running water and cook it in a lot of water draining it afterward so we are now down to, approximately, 1.2 to 2.2 micrograms per cup of rice. Plus, my gloop is not all rice, it has just as much wheat, barley, oats and kamut and I certainly do not eat rice every day so this brings the actual consumed levels further down. Furthermore, (and I am quoting from an EPA report) "the EPA estimated that rice contributes 17 percent of dietary exposure to inorganic arsenic, which would put it in third place, behind fruits and fruit juices at 18 percent, and vegetables at 24 percent. ... a more complete study by the European Food Safety Authority found cereal products could account for more than half of dietary exposure to inorganic arsenic". Not that the last part matters because I don't feed any human cereals to my birds but there are lots and lots of people who still feed cheerios and such to their birds so I figured I would mention this, too.

So, in conclusion, when it comes to arsenic exposure, to play it 100% safe, we would have to eliminate rice, fruits and vegetables and, if we did, what would we feed our birds?! See what I mean? This is what I was talking about when I say that one needs to find a practical median for these things because, as much as one would want to make everything completely and 100% safe, you can't!