The End of Food. Thomas F. Pawlick

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СКАЧАТЬ rates, and death in livestock such as cattle, turkeys and sheep. Lasalocid, commercially produced since 1977, has also accidentally poisoned dogs.

      The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires a specified period between the time of animal medication and time of slaughter, which is supposed to minimize the likelihood of such reactions, but the possibility remains.

      ARSENIC Well-known in its pure, inorganic form as a deadly poison (Lucrezia Borgia was alleged to carry it in a hollow ring, ready to tip into a victim’s wine when he wasn’t looking), the semimetallic element arsenic (As), in its less-toxic organic form, occurs naturally in food, water, and in the environment. The human body can tolerate a minimal amount of the organic variety, but exposure to too much of it over a long term has been associated with “cancer of the bladder, lungs, skin, kidney, nasal passages, liver, and prostate, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”²³ It has also been associated with “cardiovascular, pulmonary, immunologic, neurologic, and endocrine problems.”²⁴

      Arsenic is a government-approved feed supplement used by poultry farmers to prevent parasite infections in chickens. The amount of arsenic found in young broiler chickens may be three to four times higher than that in other poultry, according to USDA researchers. How much arsenic residue in chicken meat is too much for a human to safely ingest?

      The answer is, nobody really knows. But we’re eating it.

      BOVINE GROWTH HORMONE (BGH) Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH, also known as recombinant bovine somatotropin, or rBST) is a hormone produced naturally in the pituitary glands of cows, which promotes both growth and milk production. Scientists can also genetically alter bacteria to produce BGH, permitting commercial laboratories to make massive, concentrated amounts of the substance, and sell it to farmers as a drug. Because BGH occurs naturally, and small residues have always been present in meat and milk, it hasn’t been thought necessary to examine the effects of artificially produced or administered BGH, or to consider what might happen if larger-than-normal amounts should enter the food chain.

      BGH is also denatured (viz., its function is changed) by the heat used in cooking meat or processing milk, and can be digested by the enzymes in the human gastrointestinal tract, giving scientists an additional reason to assume that it could have no effect if it enters our food supply.

      However, a growing number of scientists and consumer activists believe such assumptions of safety are dangerously complacent, to the point of recklessness.

      The most obvious reason for unease is the possible threat posed by BGH’s effect on yet another hormone–called Insulin-like Growth Factor (IGF-I)—which is found in both cows and humans. IGF-I is extremely important because it appears to act as a sort of biochemical regulator or mediator that determines cellular response to various other growth hormones in various parts of the body. Abnormal increases or decreases in IGF-I can alter how the human body reacts not only to IGF-I itself, but how it reacts to the other hormones as well.

      IGF-I is a potent “mitogen,” or substance which stimulates cell division and boosts growth. Ominously, this can include not only the division and growth of normal, healthy cells, but also of cancer cells. As a survey of recent research on the subject by the Joint World Health Organization (WHO)/UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) noted, Insulin-like Growth Factors are important mitogens in many types of malignancies.²⁵

      “Not surprisingly,” the WHO/FAO authors add, “most of the cancers that IGF-I is associated with occur in tissues where IGF-I normally plays an important growth role, including the mammary, cardiovascular, respiratory and nervous systems, the skeleton and the intestinal tract.”²⁶

      In other words, IGF-I may be a cause of potentially fatal cancers all over the body, but especially in the breast, colon, and smooth muscles. Says the report: “IGFs have been shown to be involved in breast cancer.... In the skeletal system, IGF-I has been associated with osteosarcoma (bone cancer). The tumor seems to strike children with the most rapidly growing bones.... IGF-I has also been implicated in lung cancer.... Five of eight human colorectal cancer cell lines were responsive to IGF-I.”²⁷

      According to the report authors, “the weight of evidence indicates that rBST use [namely, BGH administered to cows] does increase IGF- I levels in milk, substantially.”²⁸ And the IGF-I in that milk, when ingested by humans “survives digestion.”²⁹

      BGH’s potential for increasing the presence of possibly cancer-causing IGF-I in milk and milk products has prompted the European Union to refuse approval for its use by European dairy farmers and to ban importation of dairy products from countries that use it. Canada has a similar policy. The U.S., under the Bush administration, has pursued an aggressive policy of threats and trade pressure to force the EU and Canada to accept BGH-laced products, but as of this writing the EU and Canada have resisted U.S. pressure.

      The effects of BGH on IGF-I, however, are not the only reason why critics oppose its use. Cows that are regularly dosed with BGH also exhibit an increased susceptibility to one of the age-old plagues of dairy farmers: mastitis–a painful disease that affects cows’ udders. The WHO/FAO report notes that in various trials of BGH-treated cows, mastitis incidence increased at rates varying from 50 to 76 percent, and that cases of rBST-associated mastitis “appear to be harder to treat than ‘normal’ mastitis.”³⁰ That is, that to cure the affected cows, higher doses of antibiotics are required. Says the WHO/FAO report:

       Both increased incidence of mastitis and more severe or longer-lasting cases of mastitis can lead to greater antibiotic use. In the Vermont study ... there were more than seven times as many cases of mastitis in rBST-treated cows compared to controls, while the average length of antibiotic treatment was almost six times as long, leading to a 43-fold increase in the total duration of antibiotic treatment for rBST-treated cows, compared to controls. In the study of 15 commercial herds that found a 47 percent overall increase in mastitis in rBST-treated cows, antibiotic treatment doubled in rBST-treated cows compared to controls. ³¹

      In other words, a mastitis near-epidemic—prompted by greedy corporate dairy producers hoping to increase milk production and boost their accountants’ bottom lines—requires those same dairymen to administer yet-heavier doses of the very antibiotics that could potentially create an alarming number of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, resistant not just to mastitis, but to a potential myriad human and bovine diseases (see Antibiotics, above).

      At the same time, greater use of antibiotics in cattle is of concern “because of residues, which some authorities believe may cause adverse (i.e. allergenic) reactions.”³²

      BROMATE AND BROMINATED DIPHENYL ETHERS (BDEs) The chemical element bromine (Br) is found in a variety of compounds, including bromates (salts or esters of bromic acid, HbrO) and brominated diphenyl ethers (BDEs).

      Early in 2004, a leading soft drink manufacturer was forced to withdraw its line of “pure” bottled drinking water from the British market when it was found to contain illegal amounts of bromate–which has been linked in studies with increased cancer risks.³³ More than 500,000 bottles had to be recalled, and not long afterward it was discovered that the bottled water had originally come from ordinary tap water, sourced from the company’s factory in Kent.

      Brominated diphenyl ethers (BDEs), commonly used as fire retardants in the foam used for furniture cushions, were reported turning up in rising proportions in the eggs of Great Lakes herring gulls in 2004, according to the Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) of Environment Canada. Concentrations of the chemical, the CWS reported, had been doubling every three СКАЧАТЬ