How Inorganic Arsenic Accumulates In The Meat of Chicken Then Sold At Your Grocery Retailer

Poultry has become one of the most contaminated sources of meat available to humans, particularly due to approved arsenic-based additives which 80% of all chickens consume in their daily diet. Until recently, chicken producers would routinely supplement poultry feed with a growth-promoting arsenical drug called roxarsone, which helps give their meat an appealing pink color. A study in Environmental Health Perspectives shows that inorganic arsenic (iAs) accumulates in the breast meat of broiler chickens, potentially as a result of treatment with the drug.
The chicken industry’s largest trade group has previously claimed that arsenic levels in its birds are safe. “We are not aware of any study that shows implications of any possibility of harm to human health as the result of the use of these products at the levels directed,” said Richard Lobb, a spokesman for the National Chicken Council.
Soils are contaminated with arsenical pesticides from chicken manure; chicken litter containing arsenic is fed to other animals.
Arsenic levels in young chickens, or “broilers,” may be three to four times greater than in other poultry and meat.
According to a 2007 issue of Chemical & Engineering News, chicken feed may pose health risks to humans who eat meat from chickens that are raised on the feed.
Although arsenic is a naturally occurring element found in food, drinking water and the environment, exposure to high levels of the inorganic form, such as that found in preservatives, insecticides and weed killers, can be deadly.
Factory farmed chickens are also exposed to infections from improper handling, air and soil pollution, environmental toxins, preservatives, metals and many other chemicals infused in all the vaccinations they receive.
In 2011 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that the livers of roxarsone-treated chickens had elevated levels of iAs, a known human carcinogen. In response, roxarsone’s manufacturer, Pfizer, voluntarily pulled the drug off the U.S. market, although it is still sold overseas, and a similar arsenical drug is still available in the United States. Sampling for the new study took place between December 2010 and June 2011, before Pfizer withdrew roxarsone from the U.S. market.
Roxarsone is an organic form of arsenic, which although less toxic to humans than the inorganic species implicated in cancer, has been shown to affect the growth of endothelial cells in culture. When roxarsone was approved by the FDA it was believed the drug passed through chickens unchanged. The FDA and new EHP studies each suggest that roxarsone can transform into iAs and accumulate in the edible portions of the birds, making the toxic metal available for human consumption.
For the current study, lead author Keeve Nachman, director of the Farming for the Future program at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, and colleagues analyzed chicken breast meat samples from three categories: 1) conventional chickens for which arsenical drug use was permitted (69 samples); 2) conventional antibiotic-free chickens for which arsenical drug use was unlikely but possible since arsenical drugs are not considered antibiotics (34 samples); and 3) chickens certified as organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which are not fed roxarsone and other arsenical feed additives (37 samples). The samples came from 82 stores in 10 U.S. metropolitan areas. Some of the samples underwent arsenic speciation, and for a subset of these the authors compared paired cooked and raw samples.