Banned Drugs in the Meat Supply? | Hacker News Reader

Banned Drugs in the Meat Supply?

consumerreports.org

61 pointslxm33 comments

Meat has inherent risk when compared to plant derived foods, and this is about "persistent toxins" (PTs). These toxins "build up" in our tissues and thus may become a threat after consuming small bits of them over a long time span. Since these PTs build up in our tissues, they usually also build up in the tissues of animals. Thus eating animal tissue is exposing us to the buildup of PTs.

As an example: it is observed that then some PT got into the environment the small animals did not suffer from it, the slightly bigger animals that eat the small ones also did not, but the larger predators (owls and hawks, iirc) were dying because at their point in the food chain the build up of PTs reached lethal levels.

Like another comment said: dose matters. But I like to add that understanding persistence matters probably just as much.

Sure, bio-accumulation is a risk, but the vast majority of meat eaten by humans is low on the food chain. Fish is a whole different story.

If they get fed hi-tox soy/corn crop they may be "low" on the food chain as in "not a predator" but the PTs still accumulate. They do not even live long enough to develop the diseases: we do.

Also they feed animals each other: see mad cow disease.

I wish the same energy currently being wasted on anti-vaxx was instead spent on the pollutants in our food, air, water and soil.

These pollutants are unavoidable and have a clinically proven negative impact on people, particularly children. DEHP in food containers and household products is very worrying.

'Mom anger' combined with Scientific validity could produce some great improvements.

Maybe the solution to the anti-vaxx issue is not to dismiss the rage, but to harness it and direct it to a worthy cause?

It would be nice to have independent reviews of vaccines from companies so that consumers could make informed decisions. Vaccines are generally good, but the accountability to keep them that way is not as strong as you'd think.

And yes, man made pollutants are still the disaster of this century. Just because we've removed lead from gasoline doesn't mean everything else is fixed.

"What can be done to keep these drugs off our plate?"

The simple solution is to stop eating animals.

Or raise your own food (plant and/or meat).

Even simpler, stop eating.

In other words, dose matters. It's what separates water from being life-sustaining vs. a quick-killing poison.

Equipment is getting more sensitive, so you find more cases if you're strictly looking at a binary level.

We have different cutoffs for different foods for the same drugs. This does make sense - while an animal may be given an antibiotic and need time to wash out, you're probably not giving it to a shrimp, so why did it get there in the first place?

That is the point of the entire article.

CR’s scientists also note that the FSIS cutoffs seem much higher than those used by other scientists, even in other government agencies. And in documents provided to CR, the FSIS acknowledged that even for drugs that should not be in meat, the agency sets its cutoffs above what the test can measure.

and

Some experts, however, worry that by relying on higher cutoffs, the FSIS may overlook possible health threats. Some research, including a 2015 review in the Journal of Veterinary Science & Toxicology, suggests that long-term exposure to low levels of drug residue in meat could increase the risk of cancer, fetal harm, antibiotic resistance, and more.

The article is more disturbing than what I quoted.

Also, this is not about antibiotics, it's about substances that are potentially fatal to some, and other substances that are carcinogenic. It's not about "why did it get there in the first places" it's that it shouldn't be there because it's harmful to health.

These are exogenous substances - they didn't magically synthesize in the animals from water and grain. As a regulator, any detectable amount should be a case opened to investigate that particular supply chain.

I have been dubious of effectiveness of homeopathy during many years. Now, it is widely used in breeding to compensate for prohibited antibiotics. This seems to prove that tiny doses also matter.

In this case I can sell you Jimi Hendrix's air guitar. Just as good as the physical one [0] and a lot cheaper.

[0] https://financesonline.com/10-most-expensive-guitars-of-musi...

can you source this claim?

LMGTFY https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5256414/

In France, it is very very common that the veterinaries prescribe homeopathy.

The abstract for that paper states:

> Cure rates for the treatments with antibiotics, homeopathy or placebo varied to a high degree, while the remedy used did not seem to make a big difference. Looking at all the studies, no study was repeated under comparable conditions. Consequently, the use of homeopathy currently cannot claim to have sufficient prognostic validity where efficacy is concerned.

I read this as suggesting that, rather than homeopathy working, antibiotics don't work particularly well.

For shame, really. A dereliction of duty by those vets.

Might as well base your health system on witchcraft.

During many years, I was convinced that the only explanation of homeopathy effectiveness was the placebo effect. The mind is very powerful. A couple of years ago, I had difficulties to sleep and my wife gave me a pill. It has worked immediately. Placebo effect can not explain the results obtained by the vets.

So you attest that the placebo effect is real yet attribute it to something else.

Lots of homeopathy fans here it seems. The guy claiming homeopathy works (science be damned [0][1][2][every credible source]) gets upvoted, and the guy questioning whether it's placebo or not gets flagged. As I said in my (also flagged) comment, according to science homeopathy is to medicine what an air guitar is to music.

> there is no reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective for any health condition [0]

> the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there’s no credible scientific evidence to support such claims. [0]

> Don’t use homeopathy to replace proven conventional care

> Studies of high methodological quality were more likely to be negative than the lower quality studies [1]

Anti-vaccination 2.0. Using low quality or disproved studies to support your claims. Although I'm willing to bet most proponents would not actually want to be treated with homeopathy for any life threatening illness.

[0] https://nccih.nih.gov/health/homeopathy

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10853874

[2] https://health.spectator.co.uk/the-debate-about-homeopathy-i...

So you found a sleeping pill that only works when you're very very tired? What a breakthrough.

So do you always ignore peer reviewed science or just when it comes to homeopathy?

Yeah, that's not how that works.

Thank you for the link. I'll read that with an open mind, but for the life of me I can't think of a single mechanism that would cause homeopathy to be more effective than chance, other than the placebo effect

This does seem like a possible application of blockchain to me. Yes, this could theoretically be accomplished with a database but if chain of custody was written to a blockchain it would be immutable. Tracing food supply I think is important to some people and this would provide a cryptographically secure way to do so.

https://youtu.be/WNH7BIzqWNI

"This hamburger has a ton of crack cocaine in it"

"Oh no! To the blockchain to find out who did it!"

"Nobody recorded adding crack at any point in the supply chain"

"But blockchain is immutable and cryptographically secure!"

This is short sighted. You would at least be able to see exactly who was involved along the line. It would be public knowledge to find unreliable suppliers that had a higher rate of contamination. Also, it would be really cool to see exactly what farm something came from.

It doesn't apply to a bag of cheetos but it definately does for a waygu beef steak.

That has nothing to do with a blockchain though - the data structure you use has no ties to the physical entities entering data into it. If there's a regulatory body enforcing compliance, why wouldn't that regulatory body just maintain a database to track the supply chain? More energy efficient, and it aligns the data with its oversight. If there's no regulatory body, then you're back to the original problem - nothing about a blockchain prevents dirty Farm A from entering Farm B into the ledger.

The last comment there: "This article has already been condemned by the USDA as rhetoric and untrue. There are no scienitific evidence for any of these claims. Yikes!"

This is why you should never use Facebook as your comments system: it allows people to just randomly say ignorant shit that any reasonable adult would never even have thought of that as something have said in the first place.

Yeah - I wish Consumer Reports would stay away from health related news. It's almost always overblown in some way.

They really need to stick to their core mission - product reviews.

They are. Products I buy in the supermarket are still products.

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