Raisins come to mind. Along with my $600 vet bill after my dogs got into my pantry and ate a tiny amount of mixed fruits. With raisins.
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KIS trace response:
Our products are made at a mill in Pennsylvania at an equine production only facility. We have always used equine only facilities due to my concern from the very beginning of ionophore contamination possibilities. We travel 4 hours one direction to the mill to get our products because I could not find an equine only facility that was closer. Hope this helps to put concern to rest that we are on top of it…
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are you certain that the impaction colic was not a result of the toxicity? there can be acute poisoning, and then there is chronic poisoning when the amount fed is not enough to kill immediately but is enough to damage the muscles and organs over a period of time. if the horse is sick but eating forage, i could see a scenario where there is impaction, and the root cause is the toxic feed. also, this information comes from MB, not the owner. there were other symptoms that align with the cause she asserts. she is not looking for a payout, why would you say that? and how did her sample, at any time, “just happen to have” monensin in it? that is proven by the A&M test which she posted on her FB page, with her name visible.
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Have you read this thread?
The amounts found in HER tests are not toxic.
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the only reason to add monensin to cattle feed is to increase milk production, so it’s about the money, not the health of the animal. given how toxic it is to equines, and that the ingredients for equine and cattle feeds are similar and come from the same sources, why not either eliminate monensin or really figure out a way to keep it all separate? One company in CA, Masterfeeds, owned by Alltech, mixes 14 supplements for cattle with monensin. They also mill equine feeds. Anyone buying equine feed from them would have to be stupid, but few people know about this. Most cases of monensin poisoning go unreported to the public - not all the horses die from it, though the ones that survive are shown to have long term, if not permanent, damage. There is a study for this if you want to look for it. IMO monensin poisoning if far more common that we think – and many owners will just think their horse died from colic, not realizing that colic is one symptom that can present.
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Exactly THIS – raw ingredients are shipped and stored before being sent on to the final facility that mixes the products. At any point in the supply chain contamination can happen. If a company uses monensin for some products, and uses the same trucks and warehouses, then cross contamination can happen then. the only way for MB to really say they are 100% safe is to not source any third party ingredients from any company that makes anything with monensin.
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Assuming the info about the necropsy is accurate, there wasn’t any heart damage. That’s a signature of monensin, and if there’s not enough to cause heart damage (which doesn’t take much, relatively speaking), I can’t imagine there’s enough to cause any sort of NQR to the point it causes the horse to do the things that lead up to an impaction.
Nobody knows how the bucket/bag was stored between opening and testing. And even if it was pristine, no on-site contamination possible, the amount found in her 2nd test, the higher ppb of her 2 tests, is so far under what’s considered the lower end toxic rate, at least for acute poisoning that it could not have killed the horses in a few days. Not to mention, allegedly no heart damage on the necropsy.
feed efficiency, faster growth, it’s not just about the milk industry, it’s about everything cattle provide to the food chain. Absolutely it’s about money, it’s all about money.
If you can find an ingredient that will increase the money coming in for every cow produced, that doesn’t cost any more and that wouldn’t endanger another species if there’s contamination, I’m sure the industry would be all over that
It IS possible to keep this all separate, IF people are willing to pay the increased cost of it. It would mean using suppliers of ingredients who never have anything to do with anything related to any ionophore - nobody who ships their ingredients, nobody who stores their ingredients. It would mean every single company who produced equine feeds would have to have entirely separate mills for those products, or have the feed(s) produced by someone who does. I’m sure I’ve left out other parts of the entire food chain, but you get the idea.
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I have read this thread and far more than that. You don’t know what I know. The comments by a few people on CoTH aren’t the litmus test for this topic (or any other one for that matter). Have you read and seen all the tests, including the one done on her product by A&M? She posted it on her FB page, and they did find monensin in that sample. She is being transparent in what she is posting there for all to see. At this point, I’d never buy another MB product and I was a customer for many years. The tests MB posted were done by MB and were not adequate to determine monensin levels, though of course they would disagree. But go ahead, believe the company that is doing damage control, and even tries to say that she might have cattle feed (she has no cattle) or even that it could come from the dirt (ludicrous). I’ll believe the person who watched her two horses die, one survived but likely has long term damage, and had her own tests done at a lab that is reliable and did the proper tests for this ingredient. We could all be unlucky as none of us can really know what’s in the products we buy, no matter how hard we try to be careful. But if there’s a red flag, I’ll pay attention.
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Are you not able to share what you know, that “we” don’t know?
I think all 3 tests have been discussed. Are there more? A&M has the ability to detect lower levels of monensin (and I think more types of ionophores) then the owner’s original test lab does. And still, that 34.6ppb isn’t nearly enough to kill a horse, especially after only a couple of doses.
Based on what info? Not a snarky question, just trying to understand why you don’t think their test was valid.
Are you saying there’s no necropsy report showing zero heart damage? And do you know for 100% sure that testing has been done on the surviving horse’s heart? Again, honest questions.
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I did the same thing you did, checked out her Facebook, and actually by just googling her name I found that before this current claim of monensin poisoning - tested only now, 9 months after the death of her horses? She has also tried to go after Mad Barn for the consistency of their feed as a choking hazard, has claimed that somebody was trying to actively poison her dogs, has demanded public apologies for virtual postings and was allegedly abused in her childhood. Considering the source and the lack of anybody else having a similar issue I am not worried about Mad Barn.
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Honestly anyone here who is concerned, just go find this person on FB and read the last year of public posts. I was concerned until I did that and clearly this person is not a reliable source. Yes, even a broke clock can be right twice a day, but based on all the other evidence it does not seem to be the case here.
Additionally, it appears she tried to attribute the horse colic deaths to MB when it happened, but related to the expansion of the pellets. Now that ionophore poisoning is in the spotlight, that’s her new angle. Whether it’s about money, attention, or just emotional need (I’d be upset to lose two horses to colic and not want it to be random/my own care fault potentially), who knows?
Screenshots from her FB from closer to the actual horse deaths.
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The fact that she thinks pellets can cause impactions is… well… 
Impactions are almost always caused by insufficient water to keep stuff moving. That’s a fact. Of course there are other things, like twists, inflammation or scar tissue that narrows the GI tract somewhere. But insufficient water is the biggest cause. Even a horse who’s mildly dehydrated isn’t going to impact because of a serving of pellets not even 1c. If that < 1c is the breaking point, there’s a bigger hydration issue going on. And, she clearly doesn’t understand what she quotes for CFIA.
But also, what a WEIRD blog post from MB. Do they not understand the acidic nature of stomach acid and how it immediately starts breaking foods down?
This just gets weirder and weirder
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Having read the actual blog article and tracing it to the [8] source I think it’s poor wording and the MB author didn’t do a good job explaining things, the reviewers didn’t catch it, and the owner chose to not read further, or choose to do some critical thinking, only stopping at something that supports her confirmation bias
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MB submitted the samples, but they were tested by an unaffiliated, 3rd party lab — A & L Canada Laboratories which specializes in Food and Pharma testing, so I don’t know how it could be said that MB is lying about the results. I find the A & L results more credible than the horse owner’s because it actually states on both tests what was tested and not some random “animal feed” that could be anything, from anywhere.
I feel for the horse owner, I really do, but her story just doesn’t sound credible.
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I don’t disagree with you.
My comment was relating to the broad statement of removing a substance due to its toxicity to another.
Also, remember the selenium poisoning of polo ponies due to incorrect compounding of a supplement? You can ban unsafe Drug X and still have tragedy occur with safe Drug Y due to overdosing.
I buy only Equine-only milled feed, even though Australia has never had an issue with a feed company cross-contaminating horse and ruminant feed. We have had botulism outbreaks though, in bagged haylage and fermented chaff.
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Having read some of her earlier fb posts, she reported that her dog was poisoned by someone. Could it be a stretch that an outside source tainted her feed or some other feed put out in her paddock? I didn’t see any suspect or charges laid with respect to her dog. Did she ever post what v/lot number was involved?
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She’s not in the right. She just isn’t.
She posted yet another email, this time from the owner/founder, that was nothing less then professional. She deletes dates in her postings and twists to suit her purpose.
I don’t know what her intent is with all of this, but I am without any doubt that Mad Barn is nothing less then a reputable company and no one should be worried.
The whole thing just pisses me off. Irrationally because I have 0 skin in the game, but it still does. Why can’t people enjoy success without the masses trying to bring them down?
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I find this interesting, because one of the red flags in the post I saw shared on FB was a lack of a batch number. And she’s posted that mixed feeds must have a batch number.
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I got my first ever message on linked in! From her… I don’t really use it much bc I am not looking for new work, but thought it was weird when I got a notification.
Also- linked in was a weird approach, I am super easy to find on Facebook and Instagram, my name isn’t common. Anyways. If you can identify who you are via your screen name. Don’t be surprised if you get a message?
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I saw that she’d posted screenshots of this thread on her FB. The BSC seems strong with this one.
I’m monitoring the situation out of curiosity–I feed their W-3 oil and have used their Visceral+ with success in the past, but never their v/m supplements. I have a very difficult time taking this individual and her crusade seriously based on what she’s presented.
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