Peanuts - You May Not Want To Feed Them

As many of you know, I prefer to tread on verifiable & scientific data rather than the hypothetical & anecdotal, but I might have been wrong about peanuts and their potential danger to our feathered friends.....I recall recently commenting that roasting or re-roasting peanuts in the shell would kill any aspergillus spores...well, I may have been wrong.

Many of you may be too young to remember Sibylle Faye, who started the Avian Web website to bring the right information about various avian topics because she lost her African grey Xena to PDD at just over a year old in 1997.....I had read an excerpt of a paper written by a Nepalese veterinarian last year, then I read his post on the Avian Web's website:

Aspergillosis in Birds: Causes, Symptoms and Treatment and today read another or maybe more expansive of his writings.....Aspergillosis in Pet Birds: Causes, Symptoms and Treatment

I will be doing some more reading on the topic, but until I again feel comfortable about feeding peanuts to my guys, peanuts have been removed from their diets.....

Thank you for posting the link to such a comprehensive article. Avian Web is a great site. I've read about Aspergillosis before, since Raven is a Pionus which are supposedly more susceptible than some other species, and especially since he has sinus and nare damage which already predisposes him to sinus infections, and has periodic vet care for that. I don't think I'm going to get so paranoid that I'm going to start boiling the drinking water, but no more peanuts! I only rarely give the kind with no shell but I guess those aren't great either.

Thankfully, Kiwi won't eat peanuts. He just flings them to the floor. I no longer buy seed mix that contains them (thankfully they now make mixes that are peanut free!, paying for a lot of bulk my bird doesn't eat and could make him sick!).

What about regular peanuts?? I bought this little jar from the pet store with papaya and peanuts and Tiki would always love it. I will be bringing home my new birds soon so is this something I should discontinue? They are just plain peanuts not salted or anything. Is that okay?

RainbowRose said:

What about regular peanuts?? I bought this little jar from the pet store with papaya and peanuts and Tiki would always love it. I will be bringing home my new birds soon so is this something I should discontinue? They are just plain peanuts not salted or anything. Is that okay?

Click to expand...

I can't answer that, given the information I posted.....I was, previously, of the impression that roasting/re-roasting would kill the aflatoxin/aspergillus spores, but now I don't know.....if shelled peanuts are roasted before shelling, there could possibly be spores in the package, but if the peanuts were roasted after shelling, I would think probably no spores, but if we're talking human food grade peanuts, they are held to a higher food grade standard.....at least here in the U.S.

Re: Peanuts - You May Not Want To Feed Them - Friday Update

After some more reading, the U.S. government has regulations in place, requiring certificates of analysis that raw peanut shipments contain no more than 20 micrograms of aflatoxin per kilogram and provides for legal action against a supplier for contaminations above 25 micrograms of aflatoxin per kilogram.....a very small amount.....

In that reading, there was a notation of the Canadian government rejecting a large shipment of raw peanuts with aflatoxin levels higher than their accepted levels and a January, 2014 warning by the Philippine government about possible salmonella contamination of peanuts sold and/or roasted by street vendors, so, from all of this extra reading, I think pre-packaged, already shelled name brand human grade peanuts (manufactured in the U.S. or Canada) are probably safe, though nothing about pet food grade peanuts or about the safety of peanuts packaged and/or processed in countries other than Canada & the U.S., except as mentioned above.....