How safe is the food we eat? I’ve related my Dad’s story of twigging 50 years ago to why his Canadian-resident mate’s sex drive had shrivelled; it was due to the estrogen being pumped into battery-raised chickens. Until last year, I would have thought that such practices were a thing of the distant past. But as a member of the Primary Production Committee, I got to ask some questions mid-year of the NZ Food Safety Authority.
Information provided to the committee told us that NZFSA was doing some studies about the use of antibiotics in factory-raised chickens. (Large amounts of antibiotics are required when chickens are stacked three and four a time into cages with an A4 size of space.) The NZFSA officials said that the studies they had done were not “conclusive” about whether the antibiotics used have any impact on human health. So what, I asked, where they doing to provide some assurance to us as New Zealanders who eat dozens of kgs of chicken per capita every year. The NZFSA’s anwer was that it was doing some more studies!
Forgive the pun, but isn’t this rather putting the egg before the chicken? Should we be eating chicken fed antibiotics if it is inconclusive that this will not do us any harm? I didn’t ask the question of NZFSA about whether estrogen is still fed to chickens here. Others might know?
I plan to follow it up, most especially since my good buddy Moana Mackey’s post about the guy in Louisiana who developed breasts and lost facial hair because he was eating chicken necks. The supposition is that because these include thyroid glands, this might be where estrogen is concentrated. I know from reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma that estrogen is fed to beef cattle in the US. This and the use of corn on feedlots has seen the average age of cattle at slaughter in the US reduce from perhaps 4 years a century ago to 14-16 months. Chickens, be they US or NZ, are raised in a matter of weeks. Yes, it does provide cheap food but it seems to me that animial welfare and human welfare are both short of what they deserve.
Agreed. A concern I have is that people are becoming antibiotic resistant, so feeding them antibiotics through food is only going to make this more likely. I also have an issue with the appalling amount of pesticides that are allowed on our food.
A good website is mercola .com.
This estrogen uptake through chicken has more effects than you say, if you observe the consumers. Young women seem to be bigger in the thigh with larger breasts and their hair is turning much whiter, and young men conversely are so slim hipped that their trousers need constant attention to avoid falling over and their walking gait has become splay-footed and rolling.
The only KFC in our little town closed for major alterations, reopening recently to a huge following of chicken-starved consumers who had been reduced to doing late night drive-bys in the hope of early delivery from the chicken drought or seeing the consolation of the Colonel’s sign.
Young men in cars had taken to wearing hoods over their heads even in hot weather, so cold are they from lowered calory intake.
Seagulls were noticeably absent having flown off to better pickings, or driven off by the predations of BB gun wielding youth, who ventured to try ‘sea chicken’ as a substitute.
Lonely groups of teens flocked together texting constantly, offering peer support, swapping recipes and alternatives to KFC.
Driving danger has increased on SH1 as low slung cars once again reduce to a crawl as they negotiate the exhaust threatening turn over the road edge into the KFC drive-in, leaving their tail feathers open to a good clipping.
And you are concerned by antibiotics, Brendon?
LOL
Ah, Spud, did I mention their predilection for deep-fried square-sectioned lengths of solanum tuberosum?
Wouldn’t trust the Food Safety Authority as far as I could throw them. They are in the pockets of big business.
Hell yes!!!