Eight Men Out: One Man’s Poison (Part II)
Written by : Lee Ann Rush
Last time, we began a review of eight food additives, ingredients and/or contaminants that, although commonly used in the United States, are banned in many foreign countries. Several of the items on the list shocked me, including the one we’re about to discuss: arsenic. Yes, you read that correctly. Arsenic, atomic number 33, defined by the dictionary as, “A highly poisonous metallic element having three allotropic forms: yellow, black and gray, of which the brittle, crystalline gray is the most common. Arsenic and its compounds are used in insecticides, weed killers, wood preservatives, semiconductors and various alloys.” Oops, they must have forgotten to mention that arsenic is also widely found in, are you ready, poultry feed!
A recent article in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives reported that “slightly elevated” levels of arsenic were found in chicken meat purchased from supermarkets in 10 cities across the country. How is this possible? Apparently, arsenic-based drugs are approved for use in poultry farming to prevent parasites in the flocks. Although one of these drugs, Roxarsone, was taken off the domestic market in 2011 (it is still sold in Latin America), another called Nitarsone is still being used to prevent a parasitic infection called blackhead, which strikes mainly turkeys. The levels of poisonous inorganic arsenic detected in the chicken samples was low (2.3 parts per billion; the FDA allows for nearly five times that amount in drinking water), but it’s important to note that meat from chickens not given the arsenic-based drugs measured only .8 parts per billion of arsenic, and organic chicken meat contained no measurable traces of arsenic at all.
Quite predictably, the National Chicken Council is unhappy about reports of arsenic contamination in its products. “Arsenic is a naturally occurring element in our environment that is widely distributed within the earth’s soil, air and water,” responded Ashley Peterson, Ph.D., vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the Council, in a statement dated May 11, 2013. “Chickens … produced for meat [known as broilers] are no longer given feed additives that contain arsenicals…. Even though … such low levels of arsenic do not harm chickens or the people eating them, [the drug Roxarsone] was removed from the market in June, 2011…. No other feed additives containing arsenic are currently fed to broilers in the U.S.” Hmmm, then why does arsenic at .8 parts per billion still register in commercially-produced chickens? The Chicken Council can’t very well blame environmentally-acquired arsenic, because the organically-grown chickens are also raised in the “earth’s soil, air and water,” yet their meat contained no measurable arsenic levels. Clearly, someone has their facts wrong.
It may take a tough man to raise a tender chicken, but it doesn’t take a genius to understand that consuming arsenic unnecessarily is unwise. Yes, it costs more, but the smart money is buying organic chicken from now on. We’ll look at more food culprits next time.
