DES and it's dangers

The book My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki is about the story of an American-Japanese woman that is hired to do a T.V. show for the American meat industry to introduce meat into the Japanese culture. The meat industry is hoping to introduce meat into the Asian culture and with that increase the size of their market. As she learns about the meat industry she starts to realize how many issues there are with it. One of the issues she discusses is the about the growth hormone DES that used to be in meats up through the 70’s.  The growth hormone was known to be harmful since 1938. The FDA and USDA suppressed many results proving the potential risks of DSA. Even after it was clear that DES was extremely harmful the FDA and USDA insisted it was safe and waited for years to finally ban it.

            The carcinogenicity of DES has been clear since 1938 however the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the FDA approved the hormone in 1947. After multiple congressional hearings on DSA the Delaney Law was passed in 1958, which banned the deliberate addition of carcinogens. However, the use of DSA continued on the alleged grounds that it did not leave any amount of detectable residue in the meat. The reality was that there were extremely cancerous levels of DES in much of the meat on the U.S. market. By 1971 twenty other countries banned the use of DES. Even then, the FDA and USDA continued to insist that DSA was not harmful until 1979 when it was finally banned in the U.S.