Some like salt and pepper on their eggs, others like a splash of hot sauce, but I doubt anyone would choose to have arsenic in their eggs.
While the news about arsenic being an ingredient in chicken feed is not new, recent news from the Utah Health Department has shed new light on this topic. As The Salt Lake Tribune reported, last year, two area children displayed much higher than average levels of arsenic, 75 to 100 percent high.
Doctors and scientists were stumped by the origins of the arsenic, until Christina McNaughten, a Utah toxicologist examined the children’s home. There she pinpointed the poison’s unlikely source—the families backyard chickens. Well, their chicken feed to be exact. The chicken feed contained roxarsone, which is an arsenic-based food additive. As the chickens ate roxarsone, the toxin was then passed on to their eggs, which the two children consumed. The study by the Utah Health Department stated that a 46-pound six-year-old who eats two eggs per day could accumulate about 506 micrograms of arsenic per week, which is significantly more than what is recommended under the minimum U.S. risk level. (Not that the FDA recommends ingesting arsenic, of course.)
So arsenic, a poison that is recognized as a cancer-causing agent, and may contribute to other life-threatening illnesses, including heat disease, diabetes, and a decline in mental functioning—why is it in chicken feed? Roxarsone and other arsenic-based substances are often added to poultry and swine for good reasons… or so they say. Producers believe that these additives combined with antibiotics help animals combat disease and grow “meatier”. An while Big Poultry asserts most of the arsenic is excreted in the chicken’s waste, this Utah Health Department study, as well as other evidence, are proving otherwise.
And it is not just backyard chickens—a 2004 study from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy showed that more than half of the store-bought chicken, and fast-food chicken, contained elevated levels of arsenic. Roughly 70 percent of broiler chickens in America are fed roxarsone, and about 2.2 million pounds of it are being used every year to produce 43 billion pounds of poultry.
It doesn’t take much more than basic common sense to know that it makes no sense to feed extremely toxic poisons to animals, which people will in turn eat. If we want a real Food Safety Policy, we need to stop feeding toxins and drugs to the animals being produce for our food supply.
Last 3 posts by Jim Sincock
- Local Foods, Local Jobs Act - March 26th, 2012
- Hospitals incorporate farmers markets into facilities - February 17th, 2012
- New USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map - January 26th, 2012
