A drug that farmers have given to chickens for decades is being pulled off the market after federal scientists found a potentially carcinogenic form of arsenic in the livers of animals treated with the substance, officials announced Wednesday.I guess I'm not surprised. Given the massive scare campaign being conducted against the use of arsenic in chicken feed, and the fact that the benefit to the chicken growers, while very real, is marginal economically, it makes sense that farmers might stop using it and accepting the loss in yield for a potential marketing gain by deeming their chicken "arsenic free". Of course, it really won't be, arsenic is a natural and fairly common substance in nature, and all waters, soils and tissues contain some.
Alpharma, a subsidiary of Pfizer, is voluntarily suspending sales of the drug 3-Nitro, which has been given to chickens since the 1940s to protect them from a parasitic disease and help them gain weight, the Food and Drug Administration announced.
The action comes after an FDA study of 100 broiler chickens found a form of arsenic known as inorganic arsenic, which is a known carcinogen, at increased levels in the livers of birds treated with the drug compared to those that were not, the agency said.
During a briefing for reporters, David Goldman of the Agriculture Department and Bernadette Dunham of the FDA stressed that the levels of arsenic detected in the chickens were very low and do not pose a health risk to consumers...
In the grand scheme of things, this won't save the Bay (despite claims, there's no evidence for widespread contamination of farmlands or the Bay as result of arsenic added to chicken feed), and there was never any real threat to human health from arsenic in chicken meat. All this will do in the long run is raise the price of chicken marginally, and encourage the people who care to try to interfere with some other industry they don't approve of.
I've posted on this before, here.
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