Waiter, There's Poison in My Poultry

Americans love them some chicken. Today's average diner eats about 60 pounds of poultry every year, up from 20 pounds in the 1940s. Whether they're baked, fried, or rotisserie-d, consumers can't quit the tasty birds.

Despite chickens' ubiquity in America's food supply, most consumers remain blissfully unaware of a dangerous poison that appears in most broiler birds. According to a recent Food and Water Watch report, about 70 percent of the country's chicken producers feed their birds an arsenic-based additive. Yes, you read that right — arsenic, as in the deadly toxin used to kill accidental witnesses or unfaithful husbands in murder-mystery novels. Arsenic-based feed additives have actually been used by chicken producers since the 1940s, but their dangerous consequences are just beginning to come to light through new studies and reports.

The non-profit Food and Water Watch recently released its "Poison Free Poultry" report, which analyzes health and environmental impact assessments of chicken producers' use of roxarsone, an arsenic-based feed additive. While chicken producers claim roxarsone prevents illness, stimulates growth, and improves birds' coloration, according to Food and Water Watch, this practice is causing dangerous health and ecological problems throughout the country. To make matters worse, roxarsone use is unregulated and largely unmonitored in the U.S.

Major poultry producers feed their birds about two million pounds of roxarsone every year. While much of the arsenic gets eliminated through chickens' urine and feces, some of it stays in birds' tissue and gets eaten by consumers. As the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) reports, about 74 percent of non-organic, non-premium grocery store chickens contain detectable levels of arsenic. That's a problem for poultry-lovin' diners because chronic exposure to arsenic has been linked to neurological problems in children; cancers of the bladder, kidneys, lungs, liver, and prostate; cardiovascular disease; and diabetes. Health-conscious consumers may select grilled chicken as an entree because it's naturally low in fat and calories, but the cutlet may come packed with pretty deadly additives.

Chicken producers argue that roxarsone isn't dangerous for consumers because most of the arsenic gets eliminated through birds' urine and feces. They're right — birds excrete about 90 percent of the arsenic found in roxarsone. But that doesn't mean the poison stays locked inside chicken poo forever.

Most poultry producers use chicken waste as fertilizer, spreading it on crop fields and other areas. As arsenic sits around in this waste, it converts into a more dangerous, inorganic form. The poison then seeps into soil, crops, groundwater, and nearby rivers and streams. Before you know it, we've got a toxin polluting our environment and making its way into even more segments of our food supply. Even if consumers successfully avoid arsenic in their barbeque chicken, look out: It could still lurk in drinking water or on fruits and veggies.

Despite roxarsone's increasingly bad rep, federal regulators like the Food and Drug Administration still fail to restrict its use. That's not because arsenic-free alternatives don't exist. The European Union, for example, bans arsenicals in poultry feed and has a zero-tolerance policy for arsenic in chicken meat. Somehow — even without its roxarsone — the E.U. manages to pump out plenty of healthy poultry.

Public health organizations like the American Cancer Society recommend eliminating all forms of arsenic that we possibly can. Cutting out roxarsone is a clear and relatively simple way to reduce Americans' exposure to this dangerous chemical. Some poultry producers like Perdue and Tyson have already given in to consumer pressure and say that they're no longer using roxarsone in their chickens. It's up to diners to keep this pressure on and make sure all chicken producers take the same course of action. Sign our petition asking Pilgrim's Pride, one of America's leading chicken producers, to completely eliminate the use of roxarsone in its birds.

Photo credit: Michael (mx5tx) via Flickr