OPEN Mineral and heavy metal content

Overview

This source page is a mechanical bulk-ingest record for a PDF in the methylmercury infant-formula research pull. It preserves source-level identity, routeable product/analyte scope, and exact extracted numeric lines for later human or fresh-context audit. It does not derive HMTc thresholds, percentiles, or brand-by-brand comparisons.

Key numbers

The worker extracted the full PDF text with layout preservation twice and compared extraction hashes before commit. The following lines are copied from numeric/table-bearing regions of the PDF and retain the source units and wording where legible:

Dogs population in households is increasing year by year1. Dog caregivers, mainly for economic reasons and
animals’ health2,3. Regardless of the main component of the food, it must meet the recommended minimum
food4. Thus, the mineral content of dog food needs to be frequently monitored5. Long-term use of the same diet
levels decline as the dog ages6. According to the literature data, fish are particularly exposed to the presence of
heavy metals7. What is important, fish and fish wastes are used to produce pet food8. Pet foods containing them
that are recommended in Europe10 and those that are recommended in the America11. Although they refer to
of Technology in Szczecin, Klemensa Janickiego 29, 71‑270 Szczecin, Poland. 2Department of Agroecology and
Crop Production, University of Agriculture in Krakow, Mickiewicza 21, 31‑120 Krakow, Poland. 3Department
of Agroengineering, West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin, Juliusza Słowackiego 17,
animal components and to compare mineral adequacy with the FEDIAF10 and AAFCO11 nutritional guidelines
for healthy adult dogs. For this purpose, an analysis of 15 minerals was undertaken, including macrominerals,
Macrominerals. Among the analyzed dog foods there were 13 foods with fish (F) as the main animal com-
ponent, 6 with poultry (P), 6 with lamb (L), 6 with beef (B), 6 with at least two animal components (MIX) and a
group of 4 other foods (O), one each with deer, ostrich, kangaroo, insects. The FEDIAF and AAFCO nutritional
dog food. Our research showed that the calcium level in 68 percent (F2, F3, F4, F7, F8, F9, F10, F11, F12, F13,
P1, P2, P3, P4, P6, L1, B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6, M1, M2, M4, M5, O1, O2, O3) of foods was below the MIN-RL
(Table 1). The highest statistically significant average level of calcium was obtained for the group of foods with
lamb (0.62 g/100 g DM) (Table 2). It was the only food group where nearly all of the foods (except L1) met the
(0.4 and 1.6 g/100 g DM, respectively). Statistically significantly the highest mean content of phosphorus was
obtained in the F8 food (1.95 g/100 g DM), and its lowest level was found in the B1 food (0.66 g/100 g DM).
Significantly the highest mean content of phosphorus was obtained in the group of foods with lamb (1.36 g/100 g
DM), while the lowest—in the group of foods with beef (1.07 g/100 g DM). All groups differed statistically
the analyzed foods had phosphorus content below the MIN-RL, while 6 dog foods exceeded the MAX-RL (F8,
F9, F13, L2, M6, O1), respectively by 21.25, 7.5, 0.63, 0.63, 5.00 and 9.38 percent. The minimum recommended
level for potassium established by FEDIAF is 0.5 g/100 g DM and by AAFCO 0.6 g/100 g DM. If the FEDIAF
be 7 percent of analyzed pet foods (P6, L1, M3). In the case of potassium (K), the highest level was statistically
significantly highest in the group of other foods (0.97 g/100 g DM), while the lowest—in the group of foods with
lamb (0.74 g/100 g DM). All groups differed statistically significantly in terms of potassium content, except for
mended minimum levels by both FEDIAF and AAFCO—0.07 and 0.06 g/100 g DM for magnesium, and 0.1 and
0.8 g/100 g DM for sodium. In the case of sodium, significant differences between the groups were found for all
Trace elements and heavy metals. FEDIAF provides both the MIN-RL (3.60 g/100 g DM) and the
MAX-LL (68.18 mg/100 g DM) of iron (Fe), while AAFCO only recommends the minimum level (4.0 mg/100 g
DM) (Table 3). All analyzed foods met the MIN-RL for iron, without exceeding the legal limit (MAX-LL). Sta-
tistically the highest amounts of iron were found in the M4 food (46.62 mg/100 g DM), while the lowest was
determined in food with fish (in the F8 food—4.82 mg/100 g DM). Statistically the highest amounts of iron
were found in the group of mixed foods (23.67 mg/100 g DM) (Table 4), while the lowest—in the group of other
foods (11.93 mg/100 g DM). All groups of foods differed significantly in terms of iron content. In the case of
MIN-RL (7.20 mg/100 g of DM) and the MAX-LL (22.70 mg/100 g of DM), while AAFCO—only the minimum
recommended level (8.0 mg/100 g of DM). The lowest level of zinc was found in the O3 food (2.53 mg/100 g
DM). The significantly lowest average zinc level was found in the group of other foods (5.53 mg/100 g DM), and
the highest—in the group of foods with fish (14.10 mg/100 g DM). All groups of foods differed significantly in
zinc, and two foods (F1 and M2) exceeded the legal limit of this trace element (78.95 and 24.92 mg/100 g DM,

Methods (brief)

(Pb, Co, Cd, Cr, Ni) using the methods of colorimetry and mass spectrometry, of OTC dry dog foods and
were opened on the same day. From each bag, a representative sample was collected for laboratory analyzes52.
Samples of foods were ground in a laboratory mill type KNIFETEC 1095 (Foss Tecator, Höganäs, Sweden),
Chemical analyzes. To determine the dry matter, the samples were dried at 105 °C until constant weight
acid (VII)52. The analyzes were performed with an atomic absorption spectrometer (Thermo Fisher Scientific
Zeiss Jena, Germany). The absorbance value of the sample, determined spectrophotometrically, from P2O5 to
1. Gerber, N. et al. Variability of selected trace elements of different meat cuts determined by ICP-MS and DRC-ICPMS. Animal 3,
1. Gregório, B. J. et al. Flow-based dynamic approach to assess bioaccessible zinc in dry dog food samples. Molecules 25, 1331 (2020).
1. ISO. ISO Method 6498:2012, Animal feeding stuffs—guidelines for sample preparation (International Organization for Standardi-

Implications

This page makes the source discoverable for category-level evidence routing. Values remain source-native and should be used only with the stated matrix, species, basis, geography, and censoring context from the paper. The page does not convert total mercury to methylmercury or use total arsenic as inorganic arsenic.

Wiki pages this source may touch

Verification notes

Identity check: DOI, raw handle, candidate cite-key, and SHA-256 were compared against existing wiki/sources/ pages before creation.
Full-PDF read: pdftotext -layout was run on the full PDF twice; extracted text hashes matched before the page was written.
Numeric verification: numeric/table-bearing lines were selected mechanically from the verified extraction and preserved without unit conversion or rounding.
Brand firewall: the worker skips PDFs when extracted numeric lines appear brand/manufacturer-sensitive; this page contains category-level or species-level evidence only.
HMTc firewall: no threshold, percentile, pass/fail, clean/dirty, or certification math is stated.

Update history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.

Commit	Date	Change	Description
3171d06	2026-08-02	major	1 section added
bc84bfc	2026-08-02	major	6 sections added; narrative text revised