Wednesday, May 9, 2012

The Truth about Diethylstilbestrol




The book My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki is about the story of an American-Japanese woman Jane who is hired to do a T.V. show by Japanese producers to introduce beef into the Japanese culture. Since there is no existing market in Asia for beef, they are hoping to promote beef consumption into the Asian culture. As she learns about the meat industry she starts to realize how many issues there are within it. One of the issues she discusses is the growth hormone DES that was used to support faster growth in cattle and chicken in meats and poultry up through the 70’s.  Even though the growth hormone was known to be harmful since 1938, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) claimed the hormone was safe for consumption for many years. These two organizations cannot be trusted to operate correctly on their own and they need to be regulated and surveyed constantly. They suppressed many test results proving the risks associated with DES. Even after it was clear beyond doubt that DES was extremely harmful the FDA and USDA insisted it was non-cancerous and waited for years to finally ban it, first banning the intentional addition and then banning it completely.
            DES stands for diethylstilbestrol and is a growth hormone that was regularly fed to cows and chicken to promote faster growth before slaughter. It was also a supplement administered to women during pregnancy to reduce the chance of miscarriage. Over the last 70 years research has shown that exposure to DES results in health risk problems for both men and women. This means that anyone who has consumed DES or anyone that has parents or grandparents that have consumed the growth hormone have health risks related to DES. Women that were exposed to DES first hand have a moderately increased risk of breast cancer. If a man is exposed to it, it can result in feminization. (Center for Disease Control) If a woman consumed DES during her pregnancy, the results can be even worse for their daughters. ‘DES daughters’ are at increased risk for vaginal and cervical cancer, infertility and other problems with the reproductive system. (DES daughters) ‘DES sons’ are at no real risk; the only effect linked to the hormone is non-cancerous cysts on the genitals. The FDA and the USDA knew about these adverse health affects and did nothing to stop the use of DES.
 DES pills that were given to pregnant women.

            Jane, the main character first comes across DES while interviewing Miss Helen. Miss Helen is a black woman that lives in the south. She and her husband admit that he had once suffered side effects from DES after eating chicken that was loaded with it. His voice became higher pitch and his breasts started growing. After this discovery Jane wanted to know more and started investigating on her own. She discovers the whole history behind DES. The cattle, the chickens, the pregnancy supplement, then she finds out that Europe banned American meat import in 1989. In 1990 Japans government then lowers the import tax on meat after being pressured into it by the U.S. government. Then, in 1991 Jane starts working on her T.V. show. She realizes that she is just part of a much bigger game being played.
            Jane soon starts to realize that she herself may be effected by DES. She goes to a factory farm run by John Dunn to film footage for her show, but her cameraman also gathered footage of something else. The footage was of the five-year-old daughter of John Dunn. It is of her naked body, revealing pubic hair and developing breasts. John’s son also experienced effects from the DES used on his fathers’ farm. Jane is pregnant at the time, and when she has an accident and gets rushed to the hospital she is frightened that her baby might suffer from her exposure, not only from her mother, but also from the farm. Jane ends up losing the child. She made a documentary from the footage of the farm, and when the Dunn’s farm is busted because of their daughters worsening health condition from illegal use of DES she starts selling her documentary to news stations around the world. This completes Jane’s story, she is finally a documentarian, as she had always wanted to be.
DES was approved by the American beef industry in 1954. For two years the cattle industry did not jump onto these new supplements, but in 1956 the beef producers started adding DES into their cattle’s diets. (Banarjee, Abhijit) In early tests with chickens, DES was found to promote a growth rate three times that of normal diets. The hormone was first administrated to cattle orally and then a few years later as technology developed through implants near the ear or the shoulder. This resulted in even more residue in the meat. Soon after that DES was administered both orally and via implant. This was quickly illegalized but the FDA had no way to check if the farmers abided by it, so they didn’t. Eventually 80% to 95% if not more of American cattle were fed DES. (Raun, A.P.)
The carcinogenicity of DES has been clear since 1938 however the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the FDA approved the hormone for consumption and use for cattle in 1947. During this time DES was already used in poultry production and causing negative health effects on people. After multiple congressional hearings on DES the Delaney Law was passed in 1958, which banned the deliberate addition of carcinogens.(About FDA) However, the use of DES 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. In 1959 the FDA banned DES implants in chickens because of its negative health effects. (Encyclopedia Britanica) The pre-approval system back then was flawed and the hormone would most likely never be approved today. Even with that, “there are several inexplicable oversights on the part of the FDA regulators.” (Initial Testing & FDA Approval) Which means that someone pulled some strings to prevent the complete illegalization of the hormone. By 1971 twenty other countries banned the use of DES altogether. Even then, the FDA and USDA continued to insist that DES was not harmful until 1979 when it was finally banned in America. “In 1980 however, half a million cattle from one hundred and fifty-six feedlots in eighteen states were found with illegal DES implants.” (Ozeki, Ruth L.) This means that regardless of DES’s illegal status farmers were still using it with no regards to the consequences of their actions. This makes it hard to trust our meat industry even today.A cow that was treated with growth hormones to produce more milk.

            Growth hormones are now completely illegal to be used with poultry, which is a good thing since it seemed to have the most impact in chickens. However growth hormones are still being used today for meat and milk production. For example the growth hormone called rBGH is still being added to milk cows to increase their milk production, thus making the cows more profitable for the farmers. The USDA and the FDA claim that they are safe, but there is a growing concern that the residue left by the hormone is harmful to humans.[1] Even more questionable are the six growth hormones that farmers are aloud to use in America today. Of the six growth hormones three are synthetic and three are naturally occurring.  The European Union still to this day banns all meat trade with America. The use of growth hormones is not permitted in Europe. “The European Committee also questioned whether hormone residues in the meat of "growth enhanced" animals and can disrupt human hormone balance, causing developmental problems, interfering with the reproductive system, and even leading to the development of breast, prostate or colon cancer.”(Artificial Hormones, Hormone Residue in Meat) This means that the growth hormones that the cattle are fed today may not be any safer then DES.
            Just like Jane, through research, I realized how much is wrong with our meat industry and that it really cannot be trusted. Jane experienced and witnessed grotesque things first hand when she started to dive into the growth hormone issue. My experiences were not as intense but it certainly helped me realize that not all meat is the same and you should be conscientious of where your meat and milk comes from because even though it may not impact you dramatically, it could still have an impact on your children especially if you are pregnant. Even though the FDA and the USDA are supposed to make sure that everything in the market is safe for consumption. They have failed in the past, so we have no reason to assume that they are perfect.  









Works Cited:
 "About FDA." FDA History. FDA. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/WhatWeDo/History/Origin/ucm055118.htm>.

"Artifical Hormones, Hormone Residue in Meat - The Issues - Sustainable Table."Sustainabletable. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/hormones/>.

Banarjee, Abhijit. "Growth Hormones in Food." Articlebase. Articlesbase.com, 03 Aug. 2008. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://www.articlesbase.com/causes-and-organizations-articles/growth-hormones-in-food-507273.html>.

"Diethylstilbestrol (DES)." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/162807/diethylstilbestrol>.

"Initial Testing & FDA Approval." Diethylstilbestrol – Friend or Foe? Wordpress. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://diethylstilbestrol.umwblogs.org/initial-testing-fda-approval/>.

"Known Health Effects for DES Daughters." DES. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://www.cdc.gov/DES/consumers/about/effects_daughters.html>.

"Known Health Effects for Women Prescribed DES While Pregnant." CDC. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://www.cdc.gov/DES/consumers/about/effects_women.html>.


"Known Health Effects for DES Daughters." DES. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://www.cdc.gov/DES/consumers/about/effects_daughters.html>.

Raun, A. P., and R. L. Preston. "History of Diethylstilbestrol Use in Cattle." Asas.org. Web. <http://www.asas.org/Bios/Raunhist.pdf>.


"Initial Testing & FDA Approval." Diethylstilbestrol – Friend or Foe? Wordpress. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://diethylstilbestrol.umwblogs.org/initial-testing-fda-approval/>.

Ozeki, Ruth L. "Chapter 6." My Year of Meats. New York: Viking, 1998. 126. Print.



The Cost of Shipping food




In todays world it has become normal to have any food available to you at any time of the year. Most of this food is not locally produced. The food comes from around the world to the shelves of your local supermarket. The cost of shipping oranges from Florida, Cod from Norway and lemons from Argentina is horrendous. The amount of greenhouse gasses that are blasted into the atmosphere transporting food is unacceptable and if we keep at it soon there will not be much left of our precious home. We have to learn to produce and eat our local food even if that means not every kind of food is always available to us at all times.
            Sure it is convenient to always be able to eat what you want, but what is the cost? Until recently, it was cheaper to grow and sell food locally because resources such as overnight shipping from one end of the earth to the other were not an option. Now, with globalization at its peak, it is cheaper to pay laborers in poor countries sometimes as little as a penny a day to grow food and then ship it half way around the world to sell it to the rich countries. If we grew and sold our food locally we could boost our economy by providing jobs for a lot of people on farms and drastically cut back on our impact on the environment because there would be no need for everything to be shipped long distance.
            It is ironic, that California, which exports a lot of food, also imports so much of it. In 2005 more then three million tons of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and wine were imported from places like Australia, the Netherlands and New Zealand. All of this food came through ports like Oakland. In fact, these ports experience so much traffic that higher pollution levels have been noticed in their vicinity. The results are an increase in health problems like asthma. The highly increased levels of diesel soot in the air cause the effects. The amount of Diesel fumes that are produced by these ports can be so great that the health risks involved with living near one of these giant ports are unacceptable. The California Air Resources Board estimated that in 2005, 2,400 early deaths and 2,800 hospitalizations for asthma and other diseases were sourced to exposure to diesel pollution from freight transport activities within California. Approximately 950 cases of asthma, 16,870 missed schools days, 43 hospital admissions, and 37 premature deaths could be linked to the worsened air quality from food imports in 2005. (Food Hub).
            However, there are exceptions to our shipping fiasco. Sometimes it may actually be less harmful to grow certain products like rare exotic flowers in tropical locations and then ship them, rather then growing them in power hungry greenhouses that suck horrendous amounts of power to produce light and heat every day. The cost of keeping a greenhouse lit and heated for the entire duration of the life of a plant is much more costly in terms of pollution then it is to let the flower grow naturally and then send it to where it is wanted. (Elizabeth Rosenthal). The question is: do we really need things like tropical flowers in our house when there are flowers that could be grown locally? We’ve made it through our entire history without them, so I think we would be just fine without them. But aside from these few and rare exceptions the impact of shipping greatly outweighs the cost of growing locally. The amount of greenhouse gases that could be saved from going into the atmosphere by cutting down on shipping is huge, and if it were less, our planet would greatly appreciate it.
            The European union recently raised their tax on imported food by twenty percent in order to encourage more domestic food production. I believe this is a step in the right direction, if imported food weren’t so cheap everywhere, people would be less inclined to buy it. Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain has started printing a chart on their products assessing the carbon footprint of an item. “This may be as radical for environmental consuming as putting a calorie count on the side of packages to help people who want to lose weight,” said Trevor Datson, spokesperson for Tesco (Elisabeth Rosenthal). I feel that it is logical to at least inform the buyer of the origin and the cost of the product that they are about to buy. Maybe, if the customer had more to base their product choice on then just the taste and price, they would be more inclined to buy an apple grown locally, rather then an apple grown somewhere in Asia that may cost twenty cents less.  
            The issue is not simply black and white however.  The impact also depends on the manner in which the food was transported, not only how far. Trains are ten times more efficient at moving food than trucks are. You could either purchase potatoes that were transported on a truck for 100 miles, or potatoes transported on train for 1,000 miles (DeWeerdt, S). The greenhouse gas emissions that resulted from these two alternatives would be about equal. Planes are by far the most inefficient way to ship food, followed by trucks then trains. Boats are the most environmentally friendly shipping solution, however they are not even close to efficient enough to be sustainable and the oil spills that are an associated risk are extremely harmful to our environment.
            The carbon footprint of food also depends on how it is grown. Swedish researcher Annika Carlsson-Kanyama led a study that found it may better, from a environmentalist perspective, for Swedish people to buy Spanish tomatoes then Swedish tomatoes, because the Spanish tomatoes were grown outside under the sun compared to the local ones which were grown in greenhouses that rely on fossil-fuels for their sun and heat energy (DeWeerdt, S.). This is the reason why, along with not shipping food, we need to accept that we won’t have access to every type of food all year long. Most foods do not grow all year long in the same place, and greenhouses are not efficient enough to be a sensible solution. People need to understand that their environment is more important then the latest craving that finds it’s way into ones’ head.
The cost of shipping food is too high, and there needs to be a change. We need to release less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere during the course of our daily lives. A great place to start would be to change how we go about food supply. People are already taking steps in the right direction, but we need to double up on our efforts or else, when we run out of gas, we’ll run out of food and that day may be sooner then we think.
           











Works Cited

DeWeerdt, S.. "Is local food better?." Worldwatch institute. Worldwatch Instirute, 2011. Web. 9 May 2012. <http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6064>.

Elisabeth, Rosenthal. "Environmental cost of Shipping."New York Times. Times, n.d. Web. 9 May 2012.

"Food miles: How far your food travels has serious consequences for your health and the climate."food hub. National Resource Defense Council, 2007. Web. 9 May 2012. <http://food-hub.org/files/resources/Food Miles.pdf>.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Annotated Bibliography


àPopular
"U.S. Policy Turns Blind Side to Dangers of Meat Additives." Cancer Prevention Coalition. Austin American-Statesman. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. <http://preventcancer.com/press/editorials/march10_92.htm>.
This article from 1989 is about the addition of growth hormones to meat and the inherent dangers. It also focuses on the effects of DES even generations after it was actually consumed. There are children and grandchildren with serious health issues that can be linked back to DES. The source seems pretty reliable; it is a popular source so that means it may not be 100% reliable. It is mostly reciting historical events so I don’t think it is very biased. The information the source offers basically serves as a timeline to what happened with DES over the years so that is extremely helpful.
àScholarly
"EUROPEAN COMMISSION FINDS GROWTH HORMONES IN MEAT POSE RISK." EBSCO Host. Journal of Environmental Health. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. <http://0-web.ebscohost.com.opac.sfsu.edu/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=104&sid=a21dc01d-f293-4c9c-b354-ef74075deb6b%40sessionmgr115&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLGNvb2tpZSx1cmwsdWlkJnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=2632367>.
This source is about the European union, which banned the use of six growth hormones.  It is also about the adverse health effects of these hormones. This is a scholarly source so I think it is extremely reliable and should prove very useful. The source relates to my essay because it is about growth hormones in meat.
à Scholarly
                  Gandhi PH.D, Renu. "Consumer Concerns About Hormones in Food." Cornell University. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. <http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/factsheet/diet/fs37.hormones.cfm>. 
This fact sheet addresses some of the consumer concerns that have been brought to BCERF regarding health effects of hormones used by the meat and dairy industries. The source is from a doctorate at a university so it is probably pretty reliable although it may be a little dated. It is about consumer health concerns regarding growth hormones in meat. This text is scholarly. I will be able to use the adverse health effects that it lists to help me prove a point about growth hormones.