Arsenic Chicken

There are plenty of problems with our food supply, from salmonella outbreaks tied to factory farmed eggs, spinach, and tomatoes to high levels of mercury in deep sea fish to environmental and health side effects from pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and GMO crops, it's enough to cause a person to dig up their backyard and plant a garden.

Might as well add one more troubling item to the list, poultry.

From Food & Water Watch...

U.S. poultry farmers have used drugs containing arsenic, a known poison, to control a common disease for decades. The FDA approved the arsenic-based drug roxarsone as a feed additive in 1944. The chicken industry discovered that roxarsone promoted growth and improved flesh pigmentation as well. Between 1995 and 2000, 70 percent of broiler chicken producers used roxarsone feed additives.

While the chicken industry maintains that arsenical drugs are safe, arsenic poses problems to human health from exposure to chicken meat and waste. A study of the USDA’s limited data found arsenic levels in young chickens to be approximately three times higher than average levels in other meats. Most arsenical drugs fed to chickens are excreted in waste, which can rapidly decompose into more toxic forms. Typically used as fertilizer, the waste can contaminate soil, water and crops.

The FDA set allowed levels for arsenic residues in poultry in 1951 and has not revised them since. Yet, the average American’s annual chicken consumption has tripled from less than 20 pounds in the 1940s to nearly 60 pounds in 2008.

The partial solution? Purchase poultry (including that turkey next week) labeled USDA-certified organic, under which the use of arsenic laced feed is prohibited.

The full report from Food & Water Watch is here.