Natural Deception: A Sobering Look at the Truth Behind the Organic Food Industry by Lott Joey

Author:Lott, Joey [Lott, Joey]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Archangel Ink
Published: 2014-11-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chemicals in Animal Foods

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Unarguably, modern, conventional, industrial food production uses a lot of chemical inputs, and when it comes to animal foods such as meat, eggs, and dairy, the amount of chemicals used are often considerably greater than in plant foods. That’s because, by and large, animals in the industrial food system are fed a great deal of plant foods (grains and beans, for example) that have been produced using chemical inputs; plus, animal producers often include a lot of additional chemical inputs in the animals’ food or through veterinary practices. For these reasons, it turns out that animal products are a different story than plant foods. The ethical implications of that are one thing, but at present, let’s just look at what residues of these chemicals end up in the food.

First of all, let’s look at pesticide residues in these foods. I consulted the USDA data as presented by the Pesticide Action Network to get a sense of how much of the pesticides end up in the foods. I first looked at beef (specifically the fat, which is where pesticides tend to accumulate and we can expect the highest value), and what I found is that the majority of contamination is from a chemical called DDE, which is a (very persistent) product of the breakdown of DDT, which has been banned in the United States for 40 years. So it is reasonable to assume that DDE values in beef are likely the same in organic versus conventional beef.

The next most commonly detected pesticide in beef is cyhalothrin, a synthetic pyrethroid insecticide, but the levels detected range from 0.0005 ppm to 0.034 ppm while the EPA tolerance in beef fat is 3 ppm, meaning that the highest levels detected were two orders of magnitude less than the tolerance. I looked at most of the rest of the detected pesticides, also noting that most of them were detected in less than one percent of tested meat, and I found similar results—residues were several orders of magnitude less than the EPA tolerances. I also looked at poultry, pork, eggs, and butter, and the results were very much the same.

Just out of curiosity, I also looked at the pesticide residues in water, including municipal water and bottled water, and it turns out that water is generally contaminated with a far greater number of pesticides and at similar amounts found in meat or other animal foods. All in all, poultry and eggs seem to have the lowest contamination rates while ruminants such as cows and dairy products from those ruminants tend to have the highest levels. Why this might be we can only guess. Perhaps it is because cows are often kept in areas where they are exposed to sprayed pesticides, which increases their exposure, whereas chickens are kept in warehouses and are protected from environmental exposure.

Ultimately, and perhaps surprisingly, the actual USDA numbers on pesticide levels found in animal foods reveal that there’s not much to be concerned about. The levels are typically very low.

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