Is this grain-free food safe for my cats?

My cats seem to be getting a little tired of the dry food brand I've been feeding--Authority Sensitive (I just use it to supplement--their diet is about 75% wet food) so I picked up a bag of Petsmart's newest release: Good Natured. I bought the grain-free Chicken and Green Pea Variety. I thought the ingredient list looked pretty good, but when I got home, I noticed the very last ingredient is Green Tea extract. I am assuming it is a preservative, as it is listed after Rosemary extract, which I know is another natural preservative. I have discovered that Green Tea extract is toxic to cats after quickly reading through some of the threads on this forum, but I am wondering about this cat food. It must be a diluted and minute quantity, as it is the last ingredient, and I can't see them getting by with putting it in there unless it passed whatever standards cat food must pass to make it on the shelves. I am nervous about feeding it, though. I've only given them a few kibbles as a treat. They gobbled it up, probably because of the green pea smell. [emoji]128516[/emoji] But I know I can return the bag of food if I need to.
I just don't know what to think. Here's the full list of ingredients:

Not sure about all that pea, especially for pea protein.  They should be relying on meat for protein.  I recommend this affordable cat food instead...

https://www.chewy.com/cat/merrick-before-grain-chicken-formula/dp/33150

Chicken deboned, chicken meal, potato dehydrated, turkey meal, chicken fat(preserved with mixed tocopherols a source of vitamin e), sweet potato dehydrated, natural chicken ; pork flavor, dried egg product, yeast culture, blueberry dried, organic alfalfa, dicalcium phosphate, salt, salmon oil, choline chloride, yucca schidigera extract, zinc amino acid complex, chicory root, marigold extract, rosemary extract, dried lactobacillus plantarum fermentation product, dried enterococcus faecium fermentation product, dried lactobacillus casei fermentation product, dried lactobacillus acidophilus fermentation product, iron amino acid complex, vitamin e supplement, manganese amino acid complex, vitamin a supplement, vitamin b12 supplement, copper amino acid complex, d-calcium pantothenate, vitamin d3, niacin, lecithin, riboflavin supplement, biotin, ethylenediamine dihydriodide, pyridoxine hydrochloride, cobalt amino acid complex, folic acid, thiamine mononitrate, sodium selenite

Thie merric food has only 1 non meat/fat ingredient in its first 5 ingredients.  Yours has 2.  First 5 ingredients are most important.

That food also is quite high in carbs although without the ash listed it's impossible to be accurate but it's around 20 per cent carbs. The food I feed is 12...but I order it online

What is the reason you need to feed dry at all? Almost all dry foods are high in carbohydrates - veg ones are no different than the grain ones. It just sounds more appealing to consumers, but its not any healthier. 

Did you know that feral cats won't ingest more than 2% carbs in the wild (Plantinga et al. 2011) and most dry food contains around 30% carbohydrates. Cats cannot properly digest carbohydrates which can lead to digestive issues, such as irritable bowl disease, diabetes, cancer, poor dental hygiene, and obesity. In addition, it lacks the moisture cats need and can cause urinary blockages, chronic kidney disease, etc. 

You are trying to compare apples to apples. Instead consider raw feeding which is species appropriate diet for obligate carnivores. There is alot of research out there these days that can help you get started. But until then, a wet diet free of carbs is ideal for your furbaby. Wet food contains not only more moisture, but a lower percent of carbs and there are many wet foods on the market now with <5%. Here is a list you may find useful and some other resources. I have a lot more if you need. 

http://www.naturalcatcareblog.com/2010/12/the-7-best-natural-commercial-cat-foods-so-far/

http://journals.cambridge.org/actio...sion&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0007114511002285

http://catinfo.org/#Inflammatory_Bowel_Disease_(IBD)

http://www.littlebigcat.com/nutrition/why-dry-food-is-bad-for-cats-and-dogs/

http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2012/02/17/dry-food-wrong-for-cats.aspx

I am well aware of the superiority of wet over dry, and I stated in my first post that my three cats are on at least a 75% WET diet--2 wet meals a day. At this point I want them accustomed to dry food as it is easier to manage if we are going to be away at mealtime...although I am a homebody, there are times I may not always be here to put out wet food on the cats' schedule. I haven't been away overnight since we rescued cats #2 and 3, but I may need to be sometime. Anything longer than overnight would require a cat sitter, I know.

Because they are getting such a small amount of dry food each day I wasn't really asking for opinions as to whether this is the very best dry food out there. I know there are better and more expensive options, but it seems fairly good. I was asking about the Green Tea extract in it. I would hate to feed it and then have it build up in their systems and do them harm or something. I was curious about Green Tea extract being an ingredient in cat food and wondering if anyone has run across it before. I have seen it listed only once before, in Nutriscience I believe, a brand I am not familiar with.

My cats like the food, the only complaint I have with it is that it's very crumbly! There's always a lot of kibble dust left in the bottom of the bag. But otherwise it seems pretty decent. I don't think the tea extract will be a problem in that small of a dose.

To the OP, I also feed my cats dry. Including my kidney cat because she just doesn't eat enough of wet to get the calories she needs. Plus, she likes to eat dry. So as my vet tells me, I feed the "whatever she will eat" diet, with an emphasis on low phos.

I feed Science Diet, which I know a lot of folks don't like, but my cats like it and most importantly, it agrees with them and their tummies. I haven't really gotten on the grain-free thing, at least not purposely. Some things I feed are grain-free but I don't look for it specifically. I can't find it now in your original post, but do you cats have food sensitivities? I've never had experience with that (thankfully!) but usually that's the reason people feed their cats stuff with peas. I hate peas so I've always wondered - why peas??? lol.

I know that rosemary extract is pretty far removed from actual rosemary that you'd encounter in the supermarket. It goes through a pretty rigorous process and if I handed to you the rosemary extract used in food you wouldn't be able to tell me it was rosemary extract. It's extracted, concentrated, occasionally made into a powder, and then sometimes worked through additional processes to further concentrate or isolate the specific particles needed. I'd imagine the same is with green tea as it's also used as a preservative. They (and grape seed extract) are part of a movement for a 'clean' ingredients list to counteract some people's actions (e.g. "if your grandma wouldn't recognise the ingredient in a kitchen, don't eat it" and/or "if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it").

Imagine taking some vanilla pods, soaking them in ethanol (alcohol like vodka), then concentrating the vanilla extract, identifying what causes the vanilla flavour and putting it through a chromatography machine so you isolate those vanilla particles only. You end up with a highly concentrated aspect of what you wanted that is far and away from what people would expect. Heck, I've got some stevia sweetner in the cupboard, and it's nothing like what I got from my stevia plant when I grew some.

If green tea extract and the use of Yucca was dangerous, I think we'd know about it. It's been around and used long enough that we'd be able to identify pockets of cats falling ill after eating food with it in. The LD50 (toxicity level needed to kill 50% of a population) would have to be pretty high -- studies were done in rats with rosemary extract was in excess of 2,000mg per kg. Green tea oil (which is not used as a food preservative) appears to have an LD50 of 8,560mg per kg. Those amounts mean someone would have to eat at least few grams of the extract to reach toxicity level -- if the numbers held true for a 5kg cat, that'd be in excess 10g of rosemary extract and 42.8g of green tea oil. Green tea extract on its own is GRAS (generally regarded as safe) but this is in relation to human use.

@Donutte -- why peas in dry food? They're both a cheap filler and a cheap protein source, taking the place of corn and wheat proteins. Potatoes are also used in some grain-free foods, again as a cheap filler (though not so much a protein source).

In summary (as this is a long post): I believe you are fine. If it was a problem, I'd suspect we would have heard about it by now. The amounts are likely poisonous in a large enough amount, but again I'd suspect a cat would have to get into the food and eat a whole lot of it before any negative effects turned up.

To explain my reasoning further. I understand that you are looking for a healthier dry, BUT feeding low to medium quality dry is not ideal . This is why I was wondering if you could remove it.
Here is why, in your case:

Authority Sensitive vs. Good Natured
It is like comparing Kit-Kat to Mars chocolate bars.  In the grain-free food your are feeding 40% carbs and that is more than the protein - holy cow! A feral cat would not eat more than 2% carbs - that is seriously inappropriate for cats - your better feeding it to a herbivore than a carnivore.   Grain-free is more of a marketing ploy because vegetables are no better than grains - both cannot be digested by cats and dry is the least digestable comparing it to wet, ground raw or whole prey diets (Kerr et al. 2014). This is one main reason why if you don't need to feed it - it is not recommended 

Thus, if you feel you need to feed dry food. Which is totally fine, especially in your case where it is not the main diet. I would recommend you either supplement with the highest quality dry which are dry foods with the fewest carbohydrates and a bit higher quality ingredients such as, Orijen, Young Again, Nature' Variety, etc, (see link below).

http://www.naturalcatcareblog.com/2011/08/best-dry-cat-foods-so-far/

OR 

A healthier option:

What about using freeze-dried raw? You could get a timed feeder - pop some water in the bottom and voila! Or you if your only feeding it once in the awhile - serve it completely dry.

An example:

http://www.primalpetfoods.com/product/list/c/14/a/f/p/all/z/b/t/a/d/b

In terms of this green tea extract. This is not commonly found in dry foods - so I don't know a lot about it. I am glad that you are questioning it. Question everything!  Cat food is really not well-regulated besides a few AAFCO guidelines which focus more on minimum amounts of protein, fat and taurine. There are lots of dangerous ingredients in pet food today. Example: garlic, avocado. So if it's making pets sick - I doubt they would be able to link it with one ingredient, when dry foods contain over 30 ingredients. So your best to be safe and avoid it in my opinion. There is controversy even with Rosemary extract.

Hope this has been helpful!