Category: Uncategorized

SPARSE TESTING. "FSIS will be able to test for 55 pesticide chemicals, 9 kinds of antibiotics, various metals, and eventually more than 50 other chemicals ... screen for several types of legal and illegal drugs — including certain antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and growth promoters. In years past, NRP would have collected 300 samples looking for just one chemical at a time." http://lnkd.in/dAEzM7D View in LinkedIn

LEGACY OF LENIENCY. "Environmental regulators are now racing to catch up with a chicken business that has outpaced them. But their efforts come up against a legacy of lenience toward the primary economic engine for Delmarva, the local shorthand for the peninsula of Delaware, Maryland and Virginia." http://lnkd.in/dTU7CGG View in LinkedIn

NOT JUST MICROBIOLOGICAL TESTS. "The change is a significant update to an often-overlooked part of the food safety system. For the last several years much of the focus has been on microbiological contamination, but much less attention has been paid to drug and chemical contamination in the food supply." (2012). http://lnkd.in/dAEzM7D View in LinkedIn

CHESAPEAKE BAY. "From the air, the industry's true scale emerges: A massive operation, global in reach, it dominates the landscape. Chicken houses fill the horizons, nearly 6,000 in all, raising more than 600 million birds a year and turning out more than 750,000 tons of manure. Tractors rake it into soils as fertilizer, the winds carrying the smell of ammonia." http://lnkd.in/dTU7CGG View in LinkedIn

WHAT TESTING DOES USDA DO? "The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service today will announce a new, more modern testing system that allows the agency to test for dozens of drugs, pesticides, and other potentially harmful compounds simultaneously, instead of only testing for one or a handful of compounds in each meat sample." (2012). http://lnkd.in/dAEzM7D View in LinkedIn

CHICKEN FARMING CAPITAL OF THE US: "Delmarva ... raises close to 600 million broilers a year. Most of the people raising the chickens don't own them. They are contract farmers ... all of which have turned the farmer into a modern-day serf. They bear the financial burden of the operation, have no say in how the chickens are raised or treated." http://lnkd.in/diHkyY8 View in LinkedIn

VANISHINGLY FEW USDA ARSENIC TESTS. "Between 2000 and 2008, the USDA tested only 1 out of every 12 million domestically produced chickens (or .00008 percent). In 2005 and 2008, the department conducted no tests for arsenic residues in domestically produced broilers." http://lnkd.in/dgKDrwk View in LinkedIn

CUMULATIVE ARSENIC BURDEN IN THE US "levels of arsenic that are above natural levels, but still well below danger levels set in federal safety standards, have been detected in commercially grown chickens (from) roxarsone and nitarsone ... Arsenic is a ubiquitous element present in American drinking water." http://lnkd.in/dB3MNvy View in LinkedIn

POLYPHARMACY TREATMENT OF CHICKENS: "routinely fed caffeine, active ingredients of Tylenol and Benadryl, banned antibiotics ... one-third of feather-meal samples contained an antihistamine that is the active ingredient of Benadryl. The great majority of feather meal contained acetaminophen ... And feather-meal samples from China contained an antidepressant that is the active ingredient in Prozac." (2012). http://lnkd.in/dwUZZPD View in LinkedIn

2012 STUDY FINDS RANGE OF DRUGS IN CHICKENS. "We were kind of floored ... It’s unbelievable what we found.” He said that the researchers had intended to test only for antibiotics. But assays for other chemicals and pharmaceuticals didn’t cost extra, so researchers asked for those results as well." http://lnkd.in/dwUZZPD View in LinkedIn