Tuesday, May 4

POISON CHICKENS, LYING USDA

Karen Davis published Poisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs seven years ago, but even she may not have been aware of the quantity of literal poison in this supposed food source. "A prominent researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health says the poultry industry's widespread use of drugs to raise chickens is exposing people who eat them to more arsenic than previously estimated. In a paper published yesterday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, Ellen K. Silbergeld said arsenic-laced drugs designed to keep the birds healthy might pose an increased risk of cancer for consumers and create manure that is contaminating Eastern Shore ground water. Silbergeld's research essentially disputed the conclusions of a U.S. Department of Agriculture study, released in the journal in January, which concluded that the drugs did not pose a serious health problem. She said the USDA underestimated the amount of arsenic found in chickens and used outdated data to estimate the health risks of ingesting arsenic. 'This paper had serious problems,' Silbergeld said of the USDA report."

Silbergeld, a toxicologist who won a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1993, said arsenic in chicken feed creates potential problems in the meat produced and the ground water affected by the waste. In case you're not paying attention, "This is arsenic. We shouldn't lose sight of the sheer outrageousness of this," Silbergeld said.

And listen to these interesting word choices: "Tamar Lasky, an epidemiologist formerly with the USDA, now concedes that the estimates in her January study may have been low. Given its preliminary nature, she said, she may have erred on the side of caution." The side of caution! Meaning what? That they tried to keep people safe from poison? No - "We were deliberately conservative.[!] We didn't want to exaggerate the numbers and have people writing in the press that there are huge numbers, in terms of arsenic levels in chicken," said Lasky. No, that's definitely not what you'd want - truthful reports in the press about the risk of poison in a common food source. I guess the word "conservative" has been completely usurped by these idiots now.

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