Chicken With Arsenic? Is That O.K.?

[CountAllVotes]

By MARIAN BURROS
Published: April 5, 2006
ARSENIC may be called the king of poisons, but it is everywhere: in the environment, in the water we drink and sometimes in the food we eat.

The amount is not enough to kill anyone in one fell swoop, but arsenic is a recognized cancer-causing agent and many experts say that no level should be considered safe. Arsenic may also contribute to other life-threatening illnesses, including heart disease and diabetes, and to a decline in mental functioning.

Yet it is deliberately being added to chicken in this country, with many scientists saying it is unnecessary. Until recently there was a very high chance that if you ate chicken some arsenic would be present because it has been a government-approved additive in poultry feed for decades. It is used to kill parasites and to promote growth.

The chicken industry's largest trade group says that arsenic levels in its birds are safe. "We are not aware of any study that shows implications of any possibility of harm to human health as the result of the use of these products at the levels directed," said Richard Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council.

<snip>

Human exposure to it has been compounded because the consumption of chicken has exploded. In 1960, each American ate 28 pounds of chicken a year. For 2005, the figure is estimated at about 87 pounds per person. In spite of this threefold rise, the F.D.A. tolerance level for arsenic in chicken of 500 parts per billion, set decades ago, has not been revised.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/dining/05well.html?_r=2&oref=login&oref=slogin

*********

As if it isn't bad enough having Mad Cow disease in the food chain and Bird Flu appear in Scotland now only to read this about chicken in the USA laced with arsenic which is known to cause cancer.

I guess Soylent Green is right around the corner. :argh:
Comments?

:dem:

[electron_blue]

1. yet another reason to eat less meat....

thanks for the link

[AllieB]

2. Another reason to eat free-range, hormone-free chicken from small farms

the meat industry is disgusting.

[RB TexLa]

3. Have to agree with Al Bundy on this one

like he said about tap water, where does it come from? The faucet.

Not concerned about what is in chickens.

And not scared of bird flu either.

[CountAllVotes]

10. I filter all the water in my house

I have a water filtering system that eliminates all chemicals/toxins from the water I use to drink and cook with. The cost is about $60 a year to replace the filter.

If I drink the tap water out of the faucet, I can tell a distinct difference in the taste.

If you don't think that water can make you sick, think again. Where I lived before, the water was found to have e-coli in it. Luckily, I had been filtering my water with the same water filtration system at that time. I did not get sick, but many others that lived where I lived at that time did. In fact, since I moved from this place, one woman age 35 years died of cancer. The man living next door to her was recently diagnosed with lymphatic cancer.

Both of them drank that water and never bothered to filter it even though it tasted awful and came out brown from the taps at times.

So go ahead, eat the chicken, drink the water and take your chances. When you see it happening all around you (fairly young people dropping dead of cancer), perhaps you will think again.

So no, I do not think any of this stuff is "safe" and I strongly believe that avoiding it if you are aware of it is a very good idea.

:dem:

[karlrschneider]

12. Your filter won't take e-coli out of the water, if it's in there.

Only boiling or chlorine will do that.

[RB TexLa]

13. Will hold my tongue a bit but ...

No, I will not as you say "think again," which insinuates that my level of thinking is below your level of thinking. So if it is ok with you, and of course you have already said it is not ok by you, but anyway I will think for myself.

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

11. What doesn't kill me

isn't doing its job. :thumbsup:

[darkism]

16. Amen and seconded for truth.

Nothing will kill you faster than worrying about dying.

[kenny blankenship]

4. It's a great preservative! Just like the embalming fluid in toothpaste-yum

arsenic and formaldehyde, two great tastes that taste great together.

[Warpy]

5. Arsenic was once used as a beauty agent

last during the Victorian era, because small amounts in the diet make the skin pale (a sign of nobility) and the hair very glossy. Some people who used it built up to alarmingly high doses, dosages that would kill a person who hadn't built up a tolerance to it.

In other words, miniscule amounts in your food and water aren't going to kill you. The people preaching zero tolerance are completely unrealistic since arsenic is in much of the country's water supply naturally and always has been.

Face it, you are not going to live forever. Something in the environment is going to kill you eventually, whether it's bacteria, global warming, or a drunk driver.

If you're freaking out about additives in chicken feed, then by all means buy organic, free range chickens if you eat meat. Or avoid meat. Just be aware that it's not going to confer immortality.

[Lindacooks]

19. Not only that, but before the Pure Food Act of 1906, beef producers

would put arsenic in meat to cover up rotten flesh.

And lead in butter to make it more yellow.

And chalk in milk to make it look thicker.

[CountAllVotes]

6. I quit eating red meat some time ago

I only eat range free/organic chicken. It is very expensive so I don't eat very much of it.

I like lamb but same story - expensive.

I've been eating more and more vegetarian foods the past couple of years. I've found some good frozen organic dinners along the way.

If you read the link it tells you the brands of chicken to avoid and also the brands that are considered "safe". However, I did note that even the brands that are considered "safe" also have a small level of arsenic in them.

This is so sad. Many many people are dying of cancer at very high rates and it is blamed on themselves and/or their lifestyle.

I believe that cancer is caused greatly in part by the food you eat.

If you live on junk food from McDonald's/Burger King/etc. you are ingesting huge amounts of this toxic crap.

Just say no to chemicals in your food if possible. It is not at all easy is my personal experience.

:dem: :kick:

[NYC]

8. People are frequently blamed for causing their own cancer.

How many people want arsenic added to chicken, or even know about it?

Chicken from five of the brands had either no detectable levels of arsenic or levels so low they could be from environmental contamination: Gerber's Poultry, Raised Right, Smart Chicken and Rosie and Rocky Jr., both from Petaluma Poultry.

Gerber's Poultry
Raised Right
Smart Chicken
Rosie
Rocky, Jr.

To make it easy for people who want to avoid added arsenic.

Study of arsenic test results in PDF.

http://www.environmentalobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=80537

[leftchick]

20. that makes me feel somewhat better

I feed my children Smart Chicken.

[formercia]

7. Arsenic is a cumulative poison

It builds up in your tissues over time. Feeding it to children should be of concern. Arsenic is a heavy metal, like lead and others that have long-term effects.

[KoKo]

9. We ought to take this article to heart...Marian Burros wrote a best

selling cookbook and used to cater with the friend she wrote the book with (until they fell out as friends) back in the '70's.

She's a food writer for NYT's but she knows her stuff and she loves to cook and eat.

[politicat]

14. Food writer and caterer doesn't mean scientist, though.

She doesn't have an organic chem or science-writing background. She's not even an environmental geologist. Hell, she's not even a farmer who has to understand FDA and USDA regulations.

The people I want telling me about food chemistry are not caterers. They're chemists. They're people who understand that 500 parts per billion means 1 mg in 4.4 pounds, and who understand the difference between organic arsenic and arsine compounds. They're people who realize that most of us get more arsenic from a pound of onions than a pound of chicken. They're people who know that every single one of us eats about a milligram of arsenic every day, and those of us in the US West, in India and Bangladesh, in New Hampshire and Northern England eat 2-3 milligrams every day.

Organic arsenic isn't really, really bad - it's in soil and water and there's nothing we can do about it; it's part of the subsurface of the planet. Covalent arsenic and arsine compounds are kinda really bad - they're gaseous and oxidized and thus grab on to our molecules a lot better. But covalent arsenic is not common.

No, I don't want to eat a teaspoon of the stuff with my morning cereal, but I drink it every day, bathe in it, and eat it in small doses. It's in my local water, and the PCBs in the paint I put on my walls is more likely to kill me than the arsenic in my lunchtime chicken salad.

[laheina]

15. But she isn't talking about naturally occurring arsenic

She's talking about arsenic added to chicken feed to kill bugs. Add to that the antibiotics, hormones, and other additives, and it seems like companies are more concerned with profits than the people that consume the food. And they definitely aren't concerned about the chickens.

Also, why does it matter that the food journalist isn't a chemist as long as she cites real food scientists and toxicologists for the story? Hell, she even talked to the chicken chokers at the industry group. It's a credible piece of reporting, imho.

[politicat]

17. The arsenic used in chicken feed is organic arsenic. (as in organic chem.)

It's roxarsone. (3-Nitro-4-hydroxyphenylarsonic acid) The chemical structure does not have a free oxygen or a free carbon to allow it to bond molecularly to another molecule. (i.e. it's chemically stable.) Also, roxarsone cannot be fed to chickens within 10 days of slaughter (USDA reg) and it metabolizes out of a chicken in 24-36 hours with a 20% consumption rate.

And if you will read the FDA and USDA consumer manuals (I won't force the real regs on you), you will see that a) neither chickens nor hogs can be fed hormones and the fine for doing so illegally is $50K per incident; b) neither chickens nor hogs can be fed antibiotics (including arsenic) except as treatment for an outbreak of disease, and c) cannot be sold for slaughter until after a legal waiting period after last day of administration has passed. Violation of these laws can cost a producer her livelihood - and it's not the buyer (i.e. Tyson, Hormel, etc) who takes the financial hit -- it's the producer (the little guy who is in debt up to his eyeballs). The regs are at www.usda.gov and look for the consumer guides.

And if you knew anyone who raised either chickens or hogs for market, you would know that we do care about the animals we raise, and we want our products to be safe and healthful (because we eat them too). Oh, and yeah, we want to make a living at it, because farming isn't something people do if they don't love what they're doing.

How do I know this? I'm the regs and chem expert for my family farm. Someone has to do it, and my cousin was really tired of it. (I don't blame her.)

But if you want the science behind the roxarsone....

According to the Geological Society of America (who studied this in 2002 and presented the paper in 2003) real-world data shows that roxarsone only transforms into As(V) during microbial composting of litter. Roxarsone is chemically stable after digestion (infer how that goes) and under anaerobic conditions. It is chemically stable in water and dry soil, as well. (GSA, Abstracts, Sept, 2003)

USGS studied this further, and concluded that roxarsone degrades into As(V) over time by ultraviolet radiation and microbial action. While THIS can contaminate the soil, As(V) is the necessary contaminant, not an organic arsenic. The way to avoid As(V) contamination is to use poultry litter in an anaerobic system (like those used to produce methane) rather than traditional composting.

What all of the above means is that chicken muscle doesn't degrade roxarsone. Digestion and muscle do not cause demethylization or deamination, and any hydroxylation is going to occur prior to muscle formation, rather than in muscle tissue. Under hydroxylation, the molecules that are broken break down into As(II), water, ammonia, and sodium chloride. However, 80% of the roxarsone passes out of the bird without being broken up. However, As(II) bonds with anything that has a negative 2 charge, and becomes stable again. Also, like humans, chickens require some arsenic - humans require about 1-2 mg a day, which we get through our food.

In highly oversimplified terms, to be dangerous, arsenic has to have five free electrons that can bond with another molecule. Neither soil based arsenic nor roxarsone have free electrons.

I spent six months learning these regs, and I have to update my knowledge every time an ag bill passes both houses of Congress. (I hate the Ag committees. I wish they'd learn to write simple English.) We raise soy, corn, hogs and a small number of chickens for local consumption, but enough that we have to comply with USDA regs. We're organic (as in hippie farmers, not Chem majors) because we never bothered to switch to chemicals. The farm's been in my family for over a hundred years. We rely on the fact that we're certified because it lets us make money, allowed us to keep my great-grandfather at home as he wanted and my great-uncle in a comfortable assisted living situation, supports my grandmother and my mother to an extent, and pays our (me, the farm manager, the legal manager and the accountant) salaries. It also allows us to keep the land in the family instead of selling it off for developers to put McMansions on and renovate the Historic Landmark buildings on the property.

So when it comes to chemicals, I don't depend on the lit from the chem companies to make sure what the neighbors are spraying is safe. I check it with independent agencies. And if I can't trust GSA and USGS to get their peer-reviewed science right, there's no one I can trust. At some point, I have to trust the data.

Like many people who have forgotten high school chemistry (and until I started doing this, I had forgotten it, too), this all looks very complex and scary, but sixteen year olds can balance these equations and the chemical analysis can be done at any community college or well equipped high school. But since most of us forget Chem after we take the final, we hear the word arsenic, think of the the movie about the two little old ladies, and freak.

[RebelOne]

18. When I read stuff like this, I am so glad I am a vegetarian. n/t