our approach for Pets
Mushroom supplements demand precision.
Our dedication to pet wellness through mushroom supplements is backed by thorough research and partnerships with global experts. We develop cutting-edge, evidence-based mushroom supplements designed to enhance the health and well-being of your beloved pets.
Rooted in nature. Refined by Science.
Strain Selection & Cultivation
Our pet-focused mushroom supplements are grown in carefully chosen regions with ideal climates, including China, Japan, Malaysia, Siberia, and Mongolia. We meticulously select strains known for their health benefits to enhance your pets' well-being. By refining substrates—using organic sawdust and wheat bran for Lion’s Mane and natural wood logs for Reishi—we produce larger, more potent fruiting bodies. This approach ensures the highest quality supplements for your beloved pets.
Research, Validation & Farm Selection
Our pet-oriented mushroom extracts are developed through thorough research and rigorous scientific validation, in collaboration with leading experts to ensure top-notch quality and effectiveness. We carefully select farms and regions, sourcing Chaga from Siberian forests and cultivating Lion’s Mane and Tremella in GuTian County, FuJian Province, known for its perfect microclimate and traditional expertise.
Extraction Methods
Ensuring your furry friends' health starts with our tailored extraction methods.
- Water Extraction: Extracts beta-glucans by heating mushrooms in water. Ideal for supplements with Cordyceps, Turkey Tail, Maitake, Tremella, and Shiitake, boosting immunity.
- Ethanol Extraction: Uses ethanol to extract non-water-soluble compounds, creating nutrient-rich supplements.
- Dual Extraction: Combines water and ethanol for Reishi, Chaga, and Lion’s Mane, ensuring high-quality health support.
Extraction Process
Our extraction process is crucial. We start with whole dried medicinal mushrooms, finely ground into powder. These powders undergo hot water, ethanol, or dual extraction over several hours, tailored for pets. We perform two 90-minute rounds at 80°C to ensure thorough extraction. A final purification stage enhances solubility and removes impurities, guaranteeing top-quality supplements. Unlike others, we never skip this step, ensuring the purest, most effective supplements for your pets.
Unmatched Quality Assurance
Our commitment to pet health exceeds industry standards. We follow FSSC 22000 for unmatched purity, adhering to both US and European protocols. Beyond US organic certification, we meet rigorous European standards with comprehensive testing. This includes checks for ethylene oxide (ETO), PAH, pesticides, microbials, heavy metals, and other contaminants. Our meticulous process ensures the highest safety and purity, providing exceptional supplements for your pets.
Verified Potent & Safe
Our commitment to your pets' health shows in our strict potency verification. We use independent labs to measure key compounds like beta-glucans and ensure our products are contaminant-free. Reputable labs such as Alkemist, Eurofins, and Helios perform our testing, guaranteeing unbiased, reliable results. This thorough process ensures our mushroom supplements provide the safest and most effective benefits for your beloved pets.
Strain Selection & Cultivation
Our pet-focused mushroom supplements are grown in carefully chosen regions with ideal climates, including China, Japan, Malaysia, Siberia, and Mongolia. We meticulously select strains known for their health benefits to enhance your pets' well-being. By refining substrates—using organic sawdust and wheat bran for Lion’s Mane and natural wood logs for Reishi—we produce larger, more potent fruiting bodies. This approach ensures the highest quality supplements for your beloved pets.
Research, Validation & Farm Selection
Our pet-oriented mushroom extracts are developed through thorough research and rigorous scientific validation, in collaboration with leading experts to ensure top-notch quality and effectiveness. We carefully select farms and regions, sourcing Chaga from Siberian forests and cultivating Lion’s Mane and Tremella in GuTian County, FuJian Province, known for its perfect microclimate and traditional expertise.
Extraction Methods
Ensuring your furry friends' health starts with our tailored extraction methods.
- Water Extraction: Extracts beta-glucans by heating mushrooms in water. Ideal for supplements with Cordyceps, Turkey Tail, Maitake, Tremella, and Shiitake, boosting immunity.
- Ethanol Extraction: Uses ethanol to extract non-water-soluble compounds, creating nutrient-rich supplements.
- Dual Extraction: Combines water and ethanol for Reishi, Chaga, and Lion’s Mane, ensuring high-quality health support.
Extraction Process
Our extraction process is crucial. We start with whole dried medicinal mushrooms, finely ground into powder. These powders undergo hot water, ethanol, or dual extraction over several hours, tailored for pets. We perform two 90-minute rounds at 80°C to ensure thorough extraction. A final purification stage enhances solubility and removes impurities, guaranteeing top-quality supplements. Unlike others, we never skip this step, ensuring the purest, most effective supplements for your pets.
Unmatched Quality Assurance
Our commitment to pet health exceeds industry standards. We follow FSSC 22000 for unmatched purity, adhering to both US and European protocols. Beyond US organic certification, we meet rigorous European standards with comprehensive testing. This includes checks for ethylene oxide (ETO), PAH, pesticides, microbials, heavy metals, and other contaminants. Our meticulous process ensures the highest safety and purity, providing exceptional supplements for your pets.
Verified Potent & Safe
Our commitment to your pets' health shows in our strict potency verification. We use independent labs to measure key compounds like beta-glucans and ensure our products are contaminant-free. Reputable labs such as Alkemist, Eurofins, and Helios perform our testing, guaranteeing unbiased, reliable results. This thorough process ensures our mushroom supplements provide the safest and most effective benefits for your beloved pets.
92%
of the companies we've reviewed do not display or share their lab results.
Our Lab Tests
We exceed industry standards to ensure the safety and potency of our pet products. Our experts rigorously test and refine our mushroom supplements for dogs and cats, meeting the highest benchmarks for quality and efficacy. Your pets deserve the best, and we deliver exceptional nutraceuticals for their well-being.
Heavy Metals
Heavy metals are a key concern, here's why testing matters:
- Why It Matters: Medicinal mushrooms are excellent bioaccumulators, absorbing heavy metals like lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic, which pose serious health risks.
- Our Focus: We meet and exceed the EU's strict safety thresholds, ensuring our mushroom supplements are safe and pure for consumption.
- Did You Know? The EU's heavy metal limits are among the toughest globally, protecting even the most vulnerable populations.
- Interesting Fact: Regular consumption of untested mushroom supplements can lead to toxic metal accumulation in the body, making our rigorous testing essential for long-term health.
Pesticides
Pesticides can be a hidden danger in mushroom supplements. Here's why our testing matters:
- Why It Matters: Medicinal mushrooms can absorb pesticides, posing health risks to consumers.
- Our Focus: There are short and extensive pesticide tests. We always choose the comprehensive, extensive test.
- Our Standards: By opting for the extensive test, we exceed safety requirements, ensuring our mushroom supplements are pure and safe.
- Consumer Confidence: Our rigorous testing ensures our mushrooms are free from harmful pesticide residues.
- Interesting Fact: Dual-extracted medicinal mushrooms can concentrate pesticide residues. Many companies cut corners with short tests, but we ensure thorough safety and purity.
Ethylene Oxide
Ethylene oxide is a crucial concern, especially for medicinal mushrooms sourced from China. Here's why our testing matters:
- Why It Matters: Ethylene oxide is used as a sterilizing agent and can leave harmful residues.
- Our Focus: Products from many regions, including China, require stringent testing due to its prevalent use in sterilization.
- Our Standards: We conduct comprehensive ethylene oxide tests to ensure our mushroom supplements meet the highest safety standards.
- Interesting Fact: Dual-extracted medicinal mushrooms can concentrate ethylene oxide residues, making thorough testing essential for safety.
Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons
Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a significant concern for medicinal mushrooms. Here's why testing matters:
- Why It Matters: PAHs are environmental pollutants that can contaminate mushrooms, posing serious health risks.
- Our Focus: PAHs can form during the drying and processing of mushrooms, making thorough testing essential.
- Little-Known Fact: Dual-extracted medicinal mushrooms can concentrate PAHs due to the alcohol used, highlighting the importance of rigorous testing.
- Our Standards: We conduct rigorous PAH testing to meet the strictest EU safety thresholds, ensuring our mushroom supplements are safe and pure.
Microbials
Microbial contamination is a critical concern for medicinal mushrooms. We take every step to ensure our mushroom supplements are free from harmful microorganisms.
- Why It Matters: Microbial contamination can occur at various stages of cultivation and processing, posing serious health risks.
- Our Focus: Medicinal mushrooms are grown in natural environments, which can introduce a variety of microbes, making thorough testing essential.
- Little-Known Fact: Harmful microbes can survive in dried and powdered forms, emphasizing the need for comprehensive microbial testing.
Beta D Glucan
Beta-D-glucans are crucial for the potency of mushroom supplements.
- Why It Matters: Beta-D-glucans, offer significant immunological benefits. Validating them is essential.
- Our Focus: High beta-D-glucan levels are vital for mushroom supplement potency. Grain-based mycelium products often lack these levels.
- Little-Known Fact: Most mushroom supplements aren't tested for beta-D-glucan content, leading to varying potency.
- Our Standards: We rigorously test beta-D-glucans and have increased our threshold from 30% to a market-leading 40%.
Alpha Glucans
Alpha-glucans can indicate impurities in medicinal mushrooms. We maintain the highest purity standards.
- Why It Matters: Alpha-glucans are undesirable as they indicate lower purity and quality.
- Our Focus: Avoiding alpha-glucans ensures the purity and effectiveness of our mushroom supplements. Grain-based mycelium products (MOG) often contain mostly grains but are sold as medicinal mushrooms. These alpha-glucans in MOG products resemble starch in tests.
- Little-Known Fact: Hardly any companies perform lab tests on their products, and those that do often avoid testing for alpha-glucans to hide bad purity.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Baker's Yeast) can inflate beta-glucan content artificially.
- Why It Matters: This common yeast in baking and brewing can mislead consumers by artificially boosting beta-glucan levels in mushroom supplements.
- Two Forms: Regular Saccharomyces cerevisiae has detectable DNA, while purified Saccharomyces cerevisiae lacks most cellular components, making its DNA undetectable.
- Our Focus: Avoiding both forms is crucial for ensuring the true potency and purity of our mushroom supplements.
- Industry Insight: We've seen notable companies selling "mushroom supplements" with their ingredient list proudly stating Saccharomyces cerevisiae, falsely boosting beta-D-glucan levels to 75%. (Beware)
board of specialists
Given the newness of mushroom supplements in the West, we've assembled a growing board of specialists to continually enhance our offerings, ensuring the highest standards of quality, safety, and efficacy.
Veterinarian - Dr Linda Simon
Dr Linda Simon MVB MRCVS is a locum veterinary surgeon who has worked in London for the past 11 years. She graduated top of her class in small animal medicine from UCD, Dublin. She is currently a member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.
Nutritionist - Rebecca Taylor
Rebecca, a Registered Nutritionist, brings extensive experience in dietary supplements and wellness to Antioxi's Scientific Advisory Board. She emphasizes using top-quality ingredients to maximize benefits in their mushroom supplements, ensuring products meet the highest standards.
Veterinarian Herbalist - Dr. Shelley Doxey
Shelley, a UK veterinary surgeon for over 20 years, runs an integrative practice using herbal medicine, including medicinal mushrooms. She tutors in veterinary herbal medicine and is a Charter Fellow of the American Association of Veterinary Botanical Medicine.