Chicken Safety Alert - Arsenic in your chicken!

Chicken Safety Alert
Arsenic in your chicken!

Many poultry producers feed animals an organic form of arsenic, which is believed to be harmless to animals, to control intestinal parasites. But there is evidence suggesting that some of this arsenic is converted in the birds into a toxic, inorganic form of arsenic. A new study shows that arsenic, a known carcinogen, was found in 55% of 155 samples of raw chicken purchased in Minnesota and California supermarkets, according to research commissioned by the nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). All of the 90 samples purchased from fast-food restaurants contained arsenic.

Toxicologist Paul Mushak, PhD of Durham, North Carolina, an expert on arsenic and other toxic elements says, “You don’t want to have any more arsenic in your body than what you absolutely can not avoid.” Questions remain about what happens to it in the human body. Symptoms that have been identified with arsenic toxicity shortly after consumption may be: severe stomach pain, high temperature, shakiness, and a feeling of core coldness which may lasts for a few hours up to a few days.

To reduce exposure: Call the consumer-service department of the producer whose poultry you typically buy and ask if the birds are given arsenic. Another option is to buy organic chicken as these birds cannot legally be given arsenic. Use of arsenic is not prohibited in chicken labeled only as kosher or “free range.”