"Is Organic Meat Less Carcinogenic?"
This study, on the carcinogenic risks
associated with the intake of various meats,
estimated the risk was so great that
we may not want to feed beef, pork,
or chicken to kids more than like
5 times a month.
This was in Europe, where lamb contamination
is a particular problem.
In the United States, if there was any standout
it would be chicken and PBDEs,
flame retardant chemicals,
not only compared to other meats,
but other countries.
U.S. chickens are like 10-20 times more
contaminated than samples taken from
other countries that have been tested,
though diet is not the only source of exposure,
as those eating vegetarian have only about
25% lower levels in their bloodstream
than those eating meat,
though a large proportion of that
may be from chicken.
For other chemicals, diet may play a larger role.
Studies of the pollutants in the breast milk
of vegetarians dating back over 30 years
have found the average vegetarian levels
of some pollutants were only 1 to 2 per cent
as high as the national average.
In fact, for the 6 out of 7 pollutants
they looked at, there wasn’t even overlap
in the range of scores;
the highest vegetarian value was lower
than the lowest value obtained
in the general population.
This is presumed to be because these pollutants
concentrate up the food chain;
so, by eating lots from all the way down
the food chain, plants, those eating
vegetarian may have an edge.
For example, dioxins: meat, fish, and dairy
believed to contribute almost all
of the dioxin body exposure.
And, indeed, if you look at those
eating strictly plant-based diets,
they may only have about a third of
the levels of dioxins and PCBs,
or even less than a fifth circulating
throughout their bodies.
This study really struck me.
India has been facing a major problem
of treating its millions of pounds
of electronic waste every year.
And, these poor workers at these electronic
waste recycling plants can be exposed
to high levels of toxic chemicals,
ending up with this kind of concentration
of PCBs in their bloodstream,
twice as high as those living
about 250 miles away along the coast.
But these were non-vegetarian
workers at the waste plant.
The PCB levels of the vegetarians
working at the same plant
was even lower.
The problem with these
cross-sectional studies
is that we can’t single out the diet.
Maybe vegetarians have other lifestyle
behaviors that protect them.
You don’t know until you...
put it to the test.
Change people’s diets and see what happens.
That’s hard to do with persistent pollutants
like PCBs which may take literally decades
to detoxify from the body,
but we can get rid of heavy metals
like mercury in a matter of months.
And, indeed, within 3 months of the
exclusion of meat, poultry, fish, and eggs
from their diets, there was a significant
drop in the levels of toxic heavy metals
in their bodies, including mercury,
cadmium, and lead.
Up to about a 30% drop within 3 months.
What if we just stick to organic meat?
Certified organic meat comes from
livestock that are fed with organically
produced feed that is free of pesticides
and animal by-products, by law.
Therefore, one would assume that there
should be a lower accumulation
of chemical residues.
However, on a practical level,
there were simply no studies on the
chemical residue content in organic meat, until...
now.
Researchers acquired 76 samples
of different kinds of meat,
both organic and conventional,
and quantified their levels of contamination
with 33 different carcinogenic
persistent organic pollutants.
After all, the ingestion of food
contributes more than 90% to the
total current exposure to these compounds,
especially food from animal origin.
On the other hand, an increasing number
of consumers are choosing organic.
In fact, organic food production increased
like 50% during the last decade;
so, are consumers of organic meat protected or not?
Well, “no sample was completely free
of carcinogenic contaminants,”
which is to be expected given how polluted
our world is these days, but what was
surprising was that “the differences between
organically and conventionally produced
meats were minimal.”
Furthermore, the current pattern of
meat consumption exceeded
the maximum limits either way.
Strikingly, the consumption of organically
produced meat not only doesn’t appear
to diminish this carcinogenic risk,
but was sometimes found to be even higher.
Bottom line, sadly, is that the consumption
of organic meat does not diminish the
carcinogenic potential associated with
the intake of these pollutants.