[Digestion] Environmentalists Anti-AD Issues

[Dick Gallien]

Major contributor of arsenic in animal feed halts practice"
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Alan Muller
show details Jun 13 (2 days ago)
This is an important step forward in the struggle to get arsenic out of the
food chain.  Most people may still not know that arsenic is intentionally
added to poultry feed in the US.  We eat it, and the birds poop it, with all
sorts of harmful effects.

The United States Geological Survey estimated in
2007<http://water.usgs.gov/wrri/06grants/2003DE32B.html> that
between 20 and 50 metric tons (44,000 to 110,000 pounds) per year of total
arsenic were applied to agricultural lands on the Delmarva Peninsula in the
form of contaminated chicken poop.

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health estimated 11
metric tons in 2009 in
Maryland<http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=10&ved=0CGAQFjAJ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcbf.typepad.com%2Ffiles%2Fjhsph.docx&rct=j&q=Arsenic%20Demarva%20Peninsula%20USGS&ei=BST2Tcv5E6-v0AHh4bztDA&usg=AFQjCNGZ3wCqu57jFgfMF_i3qv2VNkPtNQ&cad=rja>
.

Data would be similar for other poultry CAFO areas.

Of course, if poultry litter is incinerated, as in Benson, Minnesota, the
arsenic will be in the ash or go up the smokestack.

For more on this see:

Movement to Ban Arsenic in Chicken Feed Bolstered by New Bills in Maryland
State Legislature<http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/pressreleases/hold-the-arsenic/>


Time to end the insane practice of lacing chicken feed with
arsenic<http://www.grist.org/factory-farms/2011-03-03-time-to-end-insane-practice-of-lacing-chicken-feed-with-arsenic>

am


http://www.iatp.org/iatp/press.cfm?refid=108026

*Contact: Paige Tomaselli, Center for Food Safety, (619) 339-3180 or (415)
826-2770**Andrew Ranallo, IATP, (612) 870-3456, andrew at iatp.org
**Major contributor of arsenic in animal feed halts practice
**Center for Food Safety and Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy urge
continued action to remove all arsenic from animal feeds permanently
**Washington, D.C., June 08, 2011  The federal Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) today announced that Alpharma, a division of the pharmaceutical
company Pfizer, has agreed to stop selling (for now) its arsenic-containing
product, 3-Nitro, for use in chicken, turkeys and swine. In 1944, 3-Nitro
became the first arsenic-containing product approved by the FDA for use in
food animals.** **When combined with antibiotics and other drugs, 3-Nitro is
widely used by poultry producers to help control a parasitic disease in
animals, but also has been used to induce greater weight gain and to create
the appearance of a healthier color in meat. IATP estimated in its 2006
report, Playing Chicken: Avoiding Arsenic in Your Meat, that more than 70
percent of all U.S. chickens raised for meat are fed arsenic. Neither
European poultry producers nor organic producers use 3-Nitro.** **The sales
suspension follows new FDA findings that use of 3-Nitro, which contains the
organic arsenic roxarsone, also increases cancer-causing inorganic arsenic
in chicken liver. The FDA did not test chicken muscle, the meat that most
people eat.** **The FDA stressed that it did not think the increased arsenic
in chicken posed a human health threat. Inorganic arsenic, however, is known
to cause multiple cancers in humans, and the science suggests that any
additional exposure in food or elsewhere will increase the risk across the
population of developing those cancers.** **"The use of arsenic in meat
production is unnecessary, and, from a public health perspective, reckless,”
says Dr. David Wallinga, a physician and author of the IATP report. “Given
what we know about this age-old poison, our exposure to all arsenic should
be reducedespecially in food."** **Pfizer markets 3-Nitro by itself as a
feed additive. However, the suspension also affects another 70 or so other
products containing 3-Nitro in combination with other antibiotics and other
ingredients, also marketed to poultry producers. In effect, the Pfizer move
to voluntarily take its product off the market means that after 30 days,
none of these 70 products will be on the market. However, Pfizer is not
giving up the NADA or FDA-approvalit could resume manufacture and sale of
its product at a later point in time.** **"We applaud Pfizer’s voluntary
step," says Paige Tomaselli, staff attorney with the Center for Food Safety,
"but we urge the FDA to now move forward on banning all arsenic-containing
additives in animal feed. These include Pfizer's own feed additives
containing nitarsone, another arsenic compound as well as those containing
arsanilic acid and carbarsone. Clearly, producers can do without them, and
they pose a very real threat to public health."** **As IATP and the Center
for Food Safety asserted in a 2009 petition to the FDA calling for a
roxarsone ban, there is abundant science both that organic arsenics are
directly toxic, but also that they convert into the more worrisome inorganic
forms of arsenic in chickens, in chicken meat, and in humans. The 2009
petition is also supported by Food Animal Concerns Trust, Oregon Physicians
for Social Responsibility, San Francisco Physicians for Social
Responsibility, Food and Water Watch, Center for Biological Diversity,
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, Center for Environmental Health,
Institute for a Sustainable Future, Health Care Without Harm and Ecology
Center of Michigan.

**On April 12, 2011, Rep. Steven Israel introduced H.R.1487, the Poison-Free
Poultry Act of 2011, which would ban all uses of roxarsone as a food
additive.
**Read the FDA press release:
http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm258342.htm :
Read the full petition:
http://www.healthobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=107024.
**Read IATP’s 2006 report, Playing Chicken: Avoiding Arsenic in Your Meat:
http://www.iatp.org/iatp/publications.cfm?accountID=421&refID=80529 .
**The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy works locally and globally
at the intersection of policy and practice to ensure fair and sustainable
food, farm and trade systems. On the web at: www.iatp.org <
 http://www.iatp.org/ <http://www.iatp.org/>>
**The Center for Food Safety is national, non-profit, membership
organization, founded in 1997, that works to protect human health and the
environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and
by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture. On the web
at: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org <
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/<http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/>
>*

Alan Muller
Energy & Environmental Consulting
113 W. 8th Street
Red Wing, MN, 55066
302.299.6783
alan at greendel.org





Dick Gallien
22501 East Burns Valley Road
Winona  MN  55987
dickgallien at gmail.com  [507]454-3126
www.thefarm.winona-mn.us

Prison bars do the confining, allowing the prisoner a mental freedom not
possible in schools, where an endless barrage of assignments, lectures,
questions and tests, serve the same purpose, under the guise of education,
while distracting as efficiently as the cracking of whips, keeping the
imprisoned from noticing that there are no real bars------and by the time
they might realize the purpose of their confinement, it is too late.



On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 8:46 AM, James Fidell <james at fidell.co.uk> wrote:

> On 15/06/11 14:11, Steven Bolgiano wrote:
>
>> Hi Group,
>> I overheard one of our more local strident activists, when asked about
>> AD for poultry comment that the by-product compost from poultry
>> digesters contained significant amounts of arsenic.
>>
>> Can anyone comment on this or other known or potential anti-AD
>> Environmentalist issues.
>>
>
> I believe arsenic compounds are added to chicken feeds as growth
> promoters and to combat certain parasites and thus end up in the
> litter.  I'm sure they've been banned in the European Union for years,
> but in the US I think it's still allowed.
>
> James
>
>
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