"Where Does the Arsenic in Chicken Come From?"
Dietary practices influence our exposure to pesticides,
toxic heavy metals, and industrial pollutants.
A diet high in fish and other animal products, for example,
results in greater exposure to these pollutants
than does a more plant-based diet, because these compounds
may accumulate up the food chain.
Researchers at UC Davis analyzed the diets of children and adults
in California to see just how bad things have gotten.
Cancer benchmark levels were exceeded by all children—
100% of children tested for arsenic, the banned pesticides dieldrin and DDT (metabolite DDE),
as well as dioxins, and not just by a little.
More than 100 times the acceptable daily exposure for arsenic in
preschoolers, school-age children, parents, and older adults.
About 10 times the acceptable levels for these various pesticides
and up to a thousand times the daily dose for dioxins.
Where are all these toxins coming from?
The #1 source of dioxins in the diets of Californian preschoolers,
kids, parents, and grandparents, appears to be
dairy, dairy, dairy, dairy,
followed by meat, then white potatoes,
refined grains, mushrooms, poultry, and fish.
Our DDT legacy these days is also mostly from dairy.
Dieldrin was created as a safer alternative to DDT, but was…
banned 2 years later, in 1974,
though it’s still found in our bodies,
mostly thanks to dairy, meat, and, evidently, cucumbers.
Chlordane made it into the 80s before being banned,
though we’re still exposed through dairy (and cukes).
Lead is also, foodwise, mostly from dairy,
and mercury, not surprisingly, mostly from tuna and other seafood,
but arsenic was surprising, mostly from chicken, in children.
Why?
Let me tell you a tale of arsenic in chicken.
Arsenic is well known as a poison by anyone who reads
mysteries or the history of the Borgias.
With its long and colorful history, arsenic is not something
that people want in their food.
So, when a biostats student went to the USDA 17 years ago
in search of a project for his master’s degree,
he decided to look into it.
What he found was this startling difference—
arsenic levels in chicken were three times that of other meats.
His veterinary colleagues were like “duh,” though.
Don’t you know we feed four different types of arsenic-containing
antibiotic drugs to poultry?
Since, you know, like 1944.
So, while arsenic-based drugs had been fed to poultry since the 1940s,
recognition of this source of exposure for humans
only occurred after this student churned through the data.
It was published in 2004, expanded upon in 2006.
The National Chicken Council was none too pleased,
saying lots of foods are contaminated with arsenic.
By focusing specifically on chicken,
the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy makes it clear
that their true objective is to force chicken producers to stop
using these safe and effective products,
by which they mean these arsenic containing drugs,
which they admit to using, but say don’t worry
they use organic arsenic, not the inorganic form
made infamous in “Arsenic and Old Lace,”
that is, apparently, until you cook it.
When you cook chicken, it appears some of the arsenic drug in the meat
turns into the arsenic- and-old lace variety.
So, the "Poison-Free Poultry Act of 2009" was introduced into Congress.
You can tell how well that did, based on the subsequent introduction
of the "Poison-Free Poultry Act of 2011",
to which they said poison-poor poultry?
Pish Posh.
And so, in 2013, a coalition of nine groups got together and sued
the FDA, and by December 31st, 2015 all arsenic-containing
poultry drugs were withdrawn.
So, as of 2016, arsenic will no longer be fed to chickens.
The bad news is that without the arsenic-containing drug roxarsone,
chicken may lose some of its appealing pink color….
In the end, the poultry industry only got away
with exposing the American public to arsenic for 72 years.
It should be noted that the European Union had never approved such drugs
in the first place, saying hmm, feed our animals arsenic?
No thanks; nein danke; no grazie; non, merci.
Europe has also long since banned the urgent threat to human health
posed by feeding farm animals millions of pounds of human antibiotics,
a problem that gets worse every year instead of better,
feeding chickens en masse literally tons of drugs
like tetracyclines and penicillins to fatten them faster,
dating back to 1951, where drug companies whipped out the all caps
to promise big profits, a dangerous practice the poultry industry
had gotten away with for 66 years… and counting.