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FDA Admits There’s Arsenic in Chicken, Swine and Turkey Feed

  • Spence Cooper
  • June 10, 2011

The FDA has acknowledged what many researchers have known for years, that the ingredient, Roxarsone, in chicken, swine and turkey feed contains arsenic. The FDA authorized the use of Roxarsone in March 1944 and by the mid-1960s, its use as a feed additive was widespread

As a result, Roxarsone, used for more than 70 years to kill parasites and accelerate animal growth, undoubtedly resides in the flesh of poultry, pork and turkey we buy in restaurants and supermarkets, and of course ends up also residing in all of us.

Besides being carcinogenic, chronic exposure to inorganic arsenic has been linked to heart disease, diabetes and declines in brain functions.

The FDA’s response is don’t worry, levels are safe. It’s all good.

Now after seven decades, Pfizer Inc., which manufactures the feed ingredient, will be forced to pull their arsenic tainted feed off the market in the US since it contains a known carcinogen.

Though the FDA only studied Roxarsone’s effect on chickens, Pfizer will pull the ingredient off the market for swine and turkeys.

A Pfizer subsidiary, Alpharma LLC, is suspending sales next month. And notwithstanding the obvious health hazard to humans, the company is waiting an entire month so producers have time to transition their birds off the drug.

“Arsenic in chicken production poses a risk not only to human health, but to the environment,” said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist with Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports. “We need to get arsenic out of food production altogether.”

Two years ago in an article that appeared in The Washington Post written by Maryland’s Attorney General, Douglas Gansler, Mr. Gansler claimed several American chicken producers, including Tyson Foods and Perdue Farms, discontinued the use of Roxarsone, but noted that 70 percent of the more than 9 billion broiler chickens produced annually in the United States were still fed Roxarsone.

Gansler added: “The federal Food and Drug Administration should ban arsenic from chicken feed. The poultry industry’s continued use of arsenic creates unnecessary and avoidable risks to our health and environment. The FDA has delayed banning this poison from our diet for far too long. If offered a side order of arsenic with my chicken, I’d say no. Wouldn’t you?”

Roxarsone Studies

The FDA’s recent study of 100 chickens found that chickens fed Roxarsone had higher levels of inorganic arsenic in their livers, compared to chickens which had not eaten Roxarsone. Inorganic arsenic is toxic.

In 1999, the European Union outlawed Roxarsone use in chicken feed.

A 2007 study conducted by Duquesne University researchers found that the organic arsenic added to chicken feed is chemically transformed into inorganic arsenic, a known carcinogen, much more quickly than previously thought.

John Stolz, professor of biology at Duquesne and co-author of the study, reported in the peer-reviewed Environmental Science & Technology Online News, that there’s an increased risk inorganic arsenic will contaminate surface water and groundwater drinking supplies in farming areas where the chicken litter fertilizer is spread repeatedly.

“What goes into the ground is very different from the compound in the chicken feed,” Stolz said. “That the organic arsenic transforms much faster means we could get a bolus of the stuff going through the groundwater aquifer.”

Four years ago, Don Hopey with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, wrote about a study that discovered arsenic-laced fertilizer dust inside the homes of farm communities where the chicken litter-based fertilizer was applied. Hopey cited another study that found arsenic in home garden fertilizer sold at lawn and garden stores.

FDA Admits There’s Arsenic in Chicken, Swine and Turkey FeedHopey claims Tyson Foods stopped using compounds containing arsenic in July 2004 after negative publicity about Roxarsone’s use, not because the arsenic additive is an environmental or health risk.

“We believe Roxarsone is safe; however, public criticism of the product in recent years led to public misunderstanding and prompted us to suspend using it,” said Gary Mickelson, a Tyson spokesman. “We don’t want there to be any question about the safety of the food we produce.”

Fours years ago, then spokesman for the FDA, Mike Herndon, said the benefits of adding organic arsenic to chicken feed far outweigh the small increase in arsenic exposure to humans.

The FDA’s remarks are about as comforting as the continuous flow of reassuring comments from Tepco, and Japanese officials about the always safe levels of radiation emitted from the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Any unnecessary human exposure to inorganic arsenic, a known carcinogen linked to heart disease and diabetes, is too much, no matter what level.

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