Recently counterfeit flea treatment products have been surfacing with alarming regularity.

People are reporting that certain flea control products are not working–but what is suspected is that they have purchased counterfeit flea products instead of the real thing.

Common complaints about questionable flea medications are:

1) that the product does not work and that the fleas have developed a resistance to the product, and

2) the horrible consequences when some animals experience adverse reactions to the counterfeit products.

Counterfeit flea products do not include the same ingredients as the real ones OR they contain additional ingredients that harm pets.

The EPA recently released a educational handout for retailers to aid in identifying counterfeit flea medication.

It seems that the following registered products tend to be targeted by unscrupulous sellers:

Although the following brand names are EPA registered numbers of legitimate products, many of the counterfeit flea meds use the same names and numbers.

* Frontline Top Spot for Cats (EPA Reg. No. 65331-2)
* Frontline Top Spot for Dogs (EPA Reg. No. 65331-3)
* Frontline Plus for Cats (EPA Reg. No. 65331-4)
* Frontline Plus for Dogs (EPA Reg. No. 65331-5)

* Advantage 10 for Dogs (EPA Reg. No. 11556-117)
* Advantage 20 for Dogs (EPA Reg. No. 11556-119)
* Advantage 55 for Dogs (EPA Reg. No. 11556-120)
* Advantage 100 for Dogs (EPA Reg. No. 11556-122)
* Advantage 9 for Cats (EPA Reg. No. 11556-116)
* Advantage 18 for Cats (EPA Reg. No. 11556-118)

It is hard to identify counterfeit flea medication products from the actual EPA registered flea meds because they often look identical.

However, in the next post I’ll get into how to avoid falling for counterfeit flea control products.