Thanks for posting. I made some calls and did more reading today and I
learned what you've posted - could have saved myself some time :-)

I did learn that the husks are processed to remove much of the danger. It
looks like the husks in the studies are unprocessed so it's hard to know
what the study means to the product we carry.

Thanks,
Burl


"paghat" wrote in message
news
In article ,
unya (Purchgdss) wrote:

This is impossible!!!!! How is it possible for any organic product to
be poisonous????? This is sheer propaganda, false bullshit and other
lies put out by the chemical fertilizer industry.

IT IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR ORGANIC PRODUCTS TO BE BAD!!!!!

Ahhhhhhh. I suggest you rethink this. Poisons are just as organic as
anything
else you can think of... Long before the chemical industry, organic
products
were known to be poisonous. Think about this. Here is a listing of
PLANTS
that are poisonous, can't get any more organic than that.
http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/alphalist.html Just because it's an
"organic product" doesn't mean it isn't poisonous if taken internally
(which is
what a dog would do if they ate the mulch).

Just my 2 cents.........
Christine

I'm pretty sure Mather was being Swiftian, not serious, but maybe I was
just getting a joke that wasn't told.

However, all risks being relative, cocoa mulch wouldn't be one of my high
worries, except it gets moldy & isn't nearly as pleasant in month three as
it was in week one.

But for threat to dogs, first of all, mainly only neurotic dogs would eat
such stuff, & will probably kill themselves sooner getting blockages &
internal injuries from also eating nails & children's toys. Such dog
neuroses are usually caused by an owner's abuse & neglect, whether
emotional of physical, so protecting the dog from cocoa mulch is a bit far
down the list of who or what it needs protection from.

Furthermore, cedar chippings are MUCH more threatening to MANY MORE dogs.
These lodge splinters in dogs' pads that easily become infected. If the
statistic is true that less than 2% of dogs even sample cocoa mulch, &
only half that 2% become even moderately ill, compare that to the greater
possibility of harm to ALL dogs that walk on or especially dig in cedar or
redwood chips.

So switching from cocoa mulch to cedar because an abused neurotic dog
MIGHT eat cocoa mulch just causes foot & pad injuries to the greater
percentage of healthy normal dogs. Not all woodchips splinter the way
cedar & redwood does, so just about any other type of woodchip would be
safer, but because cedar & redwood lasts longest, mostly only the
potentially harmful stuff is used.

But you know what I like best as a topcoating? Cheep fully composted steer
manure. Well composted steer manure looks like rich black loam, but is a
sterile surface coating that retards weed seeds from germinating while
simultaneously enriching the lower soil as the topcoating is rained
through. It has to be applied once a year preferably in autumn possibly in
spring. Leafmold is just as nice if you can make it yourself from
gathered leaves, but hard to have a lot of that at once. All sterile
composts are quite good for this purpose, but steer manure tends to be
extremely cheap. The chap who runs Heronswood recommended steer manure &
deplores woodchips. I now use finer composts & home-made composts when
working a soil deeply, but for a topcoating, cheapo steer manure has
worked GREAT and cut down my weeding chores way more than I'd expected
from it.

And as for the alkaloids in chocolate that are so deadly to dogs, the
primary source is always going to be children with candybars who don't
know how harmful it is to share with the dog. Most chocolate bars are milk
chocolate & do not contain enough of the alkaloid theomobrine to make a
dog sick, unless an awfully little dog, or unless they eat three or four
pounds of chocolate at a go. It wouldn't take a lot of unsweetened dark
baking chocolate to kill a dog outright, but how many kids are carrying
around a can of unsweetened baker's cocoa. Since children frequently just
feed dogs a piece or two of milk chocolate, they never see the harm that
can be done, as it's unwise but not a killer at such low doses.

The reason actually USEFUL & specific information is not generally cited
is because the "cocoa mulch scare" was started by the radical fringe of
the Animal Rights community under the guidance of John Frazier,
antivivesectionist. Now I'm an antivivisectionist myself, but many in the
animal rights community take it way too far & have rendered the whole idea
of "Animal Rights" absurd. The people who want you to pressure Home Depot
& Foremans for selling cocoa mulch are the same people who are fighting
against your right to have a pet at all. I do not exaggerate; Peta's long
term goal is to stop people from keeping pets, OR livestock. I share some
of the same moral principles in that I personally would never eat an
animal, nor experiment on an animal, but I do not want to impose my
morality on others by law the way Peta would like to do, & I certainly
would not include all domestic uses of animals as unacceptable. What such
organizations like to do with their "public face" is issue warnings like
this one against cocoa mulch, but their wording of the "warnings"
targetted Home Depot & Foremans for strictly political, not educative
purposes. They wanted to induce an edge of hysteria in the public that
would put pressure against businesses to assist groups like Peta in
furthering an agenda that is a lot more about crazy impositions against
human rights than it is about the safety or preservation of animals. Peta
is on record that it would be better tha all animals were extinct than be
exploited -- whether exploited as pets or as food.

The germ of truth to the warning is hampered by it actually being a
fear-tactic used as a weapon against Home Depot & Foreman's. The original
propoganda warning said there were "several deaths" per week & claimed
also that cats would be poisoned -- neither statement had any basis. Yet
they were so successful they scared the bejabbers out of gardeners & dog
owners everywhere who began calling poison control experts who without
studies to go by noted only that no dog should be allowed to eat chcolate
nor any part of a cocoa plant. Any veterinarian or poison control expert
will say categorically all parts of the cocoa plant are toxic to dogs due
to the theobromine content. The panic that the animal rights radicals
drummed will probably eventually induce some serious study, but already,
as a direct consequence of public terror, the University of Illinois
Horticultural Extension looked into it. Though no studies of consequence
exist, the amount of the harmful alkaloid in each part of the cocoa plant
is well known, so some speculative possibilities can be made. The husks
contain four times as much theobromine as a hershey's milk chocolate bar.
So while a child would have to feed FOUR POUNDS of milk chocolate bars to
a dog to kill it, a german shepard or a doberman would only have to eat
ONE POUND of cocoa mulch to kill itself (a chihuahua considerably less).
Less than 3 ounces of cocoa mulch might be enough to cause hyperactivity &
confusion or at least diarrhea. An estimated 1% of dogs are likely to be
"harmed" by the presence of accessible cocoa mulch -- that 1% includes
dogs with even slightly percievable non-lethal responses.

So it is a rational thing to think about, but the panic induced by clever
animal rights radicals -- the same people who consider even keeping a
companion animal in perfect health as "exploitative" & should be outlawed
-- certainly has exaggerated the "problem" beyond reason. Cocoa mulch will
never be as harmful as the plethora of "ordinary" garden chemicals all too
many suburban gardeners use all the time. If someone wants to add cocoa
mulch to their list of "no!" for the garden, fine with me, but I hope they
have started that list with insecticides, herbecides, fungicides, & even
the majority of chemical fertilizers.

-paghat the ratgirl

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/