Hormones and Drugs used in Meat
and their Effect on Health

To keep their animals "healthy" and to maximise profits modern farmers often use drugs and hormones. The drugs help to reduce financial loss of animals dying of ill health before they can make a profit. Since animals are kept in overcrowded conditions there is a real need for artificial help.

As well as this, drugs are frequently used to improve the weight and appearance of animals intended for sale as meat.

Intensive farming methods mean than animals are often kept in very cramped and uncomfortable conditions. To keep them calm tranquillisers are used, and to reduce the risk of infection antibiotics are used.

Just a few years ago antibiotics were used to treat sick animals and to prevent the spread of disease. But now antibiotics are commonly used in a very different way. These days, antibiotics are used to encourage faster than average growth and are routinely added to animal feeds.

The use of Antibiotics

Nearly half of the antibiotics currently being made go into animal feeds. Young animals are taken from their mothers at a much earlier age than they used to be. This means they have no chance to acquire any immunity from drinking their mother’s milk, and so are much more susceptible to disease. It is not uncommon for young animals to be on antibiotics continually until they are slaughtered for meat.

There are several dangers to over-using antibiotics in farming. Doctors treating patients with the same antibiotics used for humans for their diseases simply don’t work. This is because the bacteria have become so used to the antibiotics that they are not killed by them.

The number of drugs available to doctors has, in this way, been greatly reduced in recent years. The health problem is made worse by the fact that when we eat the meat from animals fed on antibiotics, we eat not only the remnants of the antibiotics, but also the actual bacteria which has acquired antibiotic resistance.

The use of Hormones

People who eat meat are also at risk from the hormones that are also commonly used by farmers. Growth hormones are popular because if you give an animal a growth hormone it will grow faster and get to a heavier weight sooner.

Despite the bans on the use of hormones in some countries, they are often secretly used, as the profit margins are enormous compared to livestock raised in more traditional ways. Bans have therefore proved to be more technical than realistic.

People who eat meat from these animals reared with the use of growth hormones eventually end up eating these hormones too. What effect the residues of these hormones have on our health, nobody seems to know, but it has been suggested that the increase in breast and prostate cancer numbers can be linked to this practice.

One of the hormones used by farmers is called diethylstilboestrol. This hormone is popular because it helps to increase the rate at which sheep and cattle develop. But it is a potentially dangerous substance. Shortly after the Second World War it was given to pregnant women who seemed likely to have miscarriages.

In the 1970s it was then revealed that the daughters of women who had been given this hormone were prone to develop cancer of the vagina. This was the first time in history that a link had been established between a drug given to one generation affecting the health of the next.

Officially, farmers are not supposed to use diethylstilboestrol. But farmers do a lot of things which they are not officially supposed to do. Just as drug use among athletes is commonplace, so the use of this hormone on farms around the world is common.

Doctors have reported that babies and young girls have started to develop breasts – and even started to produce milk of their own – after being fed on milk from cows which have been given hormones.

In Italy, women noticed that their babies had started developing breasts: this was blamed on the use of hormones in meat, after it was discovered that the women had given their babies baby food manufactured from animals that had been given diethylstilboestrol.

In America, the use of hormones is so common that 80 percent of the cattle reared have been artificially enhanced with hormones. A single, very cheap hormone pellet can help make an animal put on an extra 22 kilos of lean meat – while eating less food than an animal not given a hormone pellet.

They claim that giving hormones to cattle is perfectly safe, yet beef from such cattle are banned in the EU. Farmers give sex hormones to their cattle for the same reason as bodybuilders and weight-lifters take them – to speedily build more muscle. The benefits to farmers is financial – there is obviously more meat to be sold on a heavily muscled cow.

The Politics of the Beef Industry

The debate has been going on for well over a decade now. Is beef taken from cows which have been given extra hormones, safe for our health? Although there is no real evidence, American farmers say that it is. And that is good enough for the Government. However, all Governments are as frightened of farmers as they are of any other big commercial group.

European farmers are not allowed to give extra hormones to cattle. And so, they have put pressure on European politicians to ban American beef (which, not surprisingly, is cheaper to produce). The American’s claim that their cattle are safe for health is based on there being, as yet, not much scientific proof that it isn’t.

But this is exactly the same argument that is used to defend genetic engineering, microwave ovens and other possible hazards to health. Everyone conveniently ignores the fact that it is extremely difficult to prove that something is dangerous when no research has been carried out to find the truth.

What we do know, is that the amount of hormone in 500 grams of meat can be more than a young person produces in a day. And that’s a lot. Sex hormones can and do have a dramatic effect on any human body (and mind).

Research has been done showing that there is a link between one of the six hormones used by farmers and endometrial (lining of the womb) and breast cancers. The hormone causes cancer by interfering with a cell’s DNA. It is generally accepted as well that there is NO safe level for substances that can alter cells in this way. Even miniscule amounts can have an effect.

You may think that this would be enough for governments to ban the use of these hormones in America, especially as cancer incidence is rising dramatically in the U.S – and has been doing so for some years.

A joint committee was set up by the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation. They have agreed that one of the hormones in use (Estradol-17-beta) has cancer causing properties. However the committee also claims to know what a safe level of this hormone substance in meat is.

Not only that, they have proclaimed that their beef contains less that these “safe” levels of this known cancer causing substance.

Judging by evidence and research elsewhere, I am of the view that anyone eating American beef is storing up trouble for their health, and have way too much trust in both the farmers and their politicians when it comes to this issue. Neither are likely to be unbiased with so much at stake for the economy and business profits.

Other Chemicals in Use

Tranquillisers, hormones and antibiotics are not the only chemicals and drugs given to livestock which may cause ill-health. Farmers use a variety of other chemicals to maximise their profits. One chemical is given to animals to kill fly eggs in their manure.

The aim is to reduce the number of flies in overcrowded animal sheds, but I don’t think anyone knows how dangerous this chemical could be to consumers' health of meat from these animals. A substance called prostaglandin is sometimes injected into an animal to bring them “into season” at a convenient time.

To all this I must add that animals also produce their own natural hormones. Modern farming techniques mean that the levels of these hormones may be particularly high. For example, when they are frightened, animals produce the hormone adrenaline.

Slaughterhouses are pretty terrifying places, so there can be no doubt that animals have a lot of this hormone circulating in their bodies before being slaughtered for meat. What is the effect on all this extra adrenaline having on humans? Your guess is as good as mine!

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