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Arsenic in Chicken

After reviewing 5000 chicken samples, researchers

from the National Institutes of Health and the

USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service recently

reported alarmingly high levels of arsenic

contamination in the flesh of broiler chickens.

These government researchers found that the

amount of arsenic in chicken greatly exceeded the

Environmental Protection Agency's new upper

safety limit of arsenic allowed in drinking

water. In fact, the amount of arsenic found in

chicken was 6 to 9 times that allowed by the EPA.

A " bucket " of Kentucky Fried Chicken would be

expected to have up to almost fifty times the

amount of arsenic allowed in a glass of water.

 

How did the arsenic get into the chickens? The

poultry industry fed it to them. Most broiler

chickens (which constitute 99% of the chicken

meat that people eat) are fed arsenic in the

United States. Although fish and shellfish also

present significant dietary sources of arsenic,

according to the Food and Drug Administration

arsenic compounds are extensively added to the

feed of animals--particularly chickens and

pigs--to make them grow faster. The animals

Americans eat are so heavily infested with

internal parasites that adding arsenic to the

feed can result in a " stunning " increase in

growth rates.

 

Dr. Ellen Silbergeld, a researcher from the Johns

Hopkins School of Public Health, said the poultry

industry's practice of using arsenic compounds in

its feed is something that has not been studied.

" It's an issue everybody is trying to pretend

doesn't exist, " she said. " Arsenic acted as a

growth stimulant in chickens -- develops the meat

faster -- and since then, the poultry industry

has gone wild using this ingredient, " says Donald

Herman, a Mississippi agricultural consultant and

former Environmental Protection Agency researcher

who has studied this use of arsenic for a decade.

" And they've tried everything to refrain it from

becoming public knowledge, " .

 

The poultry industry argues that the organic form

of arsenic given to chickens isn't toxic. " This

study appears to be much ado about nothing, " says

Richard Lobb, the public relations Director of

the National Chicken Council. He says the less

toxic form of arsenic is " used responsibly and

safely by poultry producers. " The researchers,

however, found not only elevated levels of

organic arsenic in chicken meat, they found

elevated levels of the highly toxic inorganic

form typically used only in insecticides and weed

killers. And cooking the muscles of these animals

may create additional toxic arsenic by-products.

 

Inorganic arsenic is considered one of the

prominent environmental causes of cancer

mortality in the world. Arsenic is a human

carcinogen linked to liver, lung, skin, kidney,

bladder and prostate cancers. It can also cause

neurological, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal

and immune system abnormalities. Diabetes has

also been linked to arsenic exposure.

 

The feeding of arsenic to chickens in the U.S.

releases hundreds of tons of arsenic into the

environment every year in the form of poultry

manure which is spread on fields as fertilizer.

In fact there's currently a coalition of families

suffering serious health conditions suing chicken

producers like Tyson after research showed cancer

rates as much as 50 times above the national

average in communities neighboring factory farmed

poultry operations.

 

The February 2004 Medical Letter on the CDC & FDA

concludes " Chicken consumption may contribute

significant amounts of arsenic to total arsenic

exposure of the U.S. population... " Levels of

arsenic in chicken are so high that other sources

may have to be monitored carefully to prevent

undue toxic exposure among the population.