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Chinese Beef and Pork Contaminated with Steroids

V

VLS_GUY

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 20, 2009
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Location
Camarillo, CA
Saw this interesting article in the Globe and Mail about Chinese Beef and Pork producers using the steroid Clenbuterol to increase lean meat production. This steroid is used by asthmatics and is easily obtained in wholesale quantities. The article is at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/lean-meat-toxin-persists-in-chinese-pork-beef-despite-bans/article1880714/
 
You are right Clenbuterol is not a steroid. I was confused by a couple bad references. I checked some drug manuals and it is a Beta 2 agonist much like caffeine.
The main is this: What does this do for feed efficiency? I mean it will melt the fat off leaving a lean product but that has an energy cost ( feed). Not to mention the obvious food safety issues. It would seems to me that better genetics and feed technology are needed ASAP.
 
You have a good point on the issue of feed efficiency, but I don't see what the big fuss is all about as far as steroids in livestock. The hormones are not deposited in the muscle. They are metabolized by the liver and kidneys, and ultimately excreted. If steroids posed a health hazard to humans, then it wouldn't be safe to eat meat from bulls, roosters, rams, Billy goats, etc.
 
Steroid hormones can have large affects in very small amounts. Women are treated with minute doses of testosterone for some maladies for example. Health impacts from natural steroids have been seen and can be found by Googling natural steroids.
For an adverse impact that therapeutic non steroids can have search DES on Wikipedia.
The use of DES and implants like Ralgro can be made unecesary by feeding bulls not steers. All the implants do is replace testicles with an implant you pay for. The management changes needed to make this work are well documented and used.
 
My point is, how can synthetic anabolic steroids given to animals be any different than the testosterone that their bodies naturally produce? Steroids are merely synthetic forms of testosterone? Is there a health hazard to eating bull meat since that bull's testicles are pumping testosterone through it's body?
 
Synthetic steroids are metabolized differently that naturally occurring steroids. Naturally occurring steroids can be easily broken down since metabolic pathways exist to do so. Synthetic steroids frequently do not have as efficient pathways for breakdown. Also synthetic steroids are given in much higher doses to livestock (or body builders for that matter) to maximize the steroids effect. This can give concentrations of steroids in far greater concentrations in animal tissues than you would get from eating beef from a bull for example. So the dose response relationship is important here.
 

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