Why arsenic in chicken feed

Because, believe it or not, in tiny doses it causes the chickens to gain weight faster and it also protects them from parasitic infections. Of course the addition of arsenic to chicken feed needed government approval so safety studies had to be carried out. The form or arsenic that was approved for use in feed was organic arsenic. This needs a bit of clarification. The term organic here is used in its proper chemical sense, meaning that it refers to a compound that contains carbon atoms.

If you want to get really technical here, the approved form was roxarsone, or in chemical language, 4-hydroxy nitrobenzenearsonic acid. This compound was tested in rodents and was found to be remarkably non-toxic. But, as was later learned, in the body of the chicken, the carbon atoms are stripped away, leaving behind the inorganic form of arsenic.

And with this there is an issue. Inorganic arsenic is carcinogenic. The highest accumulation was recorded in the flesh of chest followed by stomach, whereas flesh of the legs and heart showed lower levels of arsenic accumulation. A comprehensive calculation was thereafter done to assess the total amount of arsenic ingestion through consumption of chicken. If a person takes This study therefore clearly suggests that excessive consumption of poultry chicken may prove to be fatal.

However, further research is necessary to confirm the present findings. To the best of our knowledge, this is probably the first report on the likelihood of arsenic contamination in the flesh of different body parts of poultry chicken from Eastern India.

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Founder of The Paleo Foundation and Cetogenica. Agnostic in general— except for I know with certainty that pineapples do not belong on pizza. Karen Pendergrass ENTP polemicist and enthusiast in a myriad of areas including agricultural sustainability, applications of bacteriotherapy, autoimmunity, color theory, hard determinism, gut microbiome, fiber, antioxidants, and psychology.

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We do not endorse non-Cleveland Clinic products or services. Every year, we hear one or two reports about too-high-to-be-safe levels of something in our food supply. The levels were too low to be deemed an official threat, but the presence of arsenic in food is always a concern. Organic forms are less toxic than inorganic forms. Regardless of its form, the question is whether you can feel safe eating foods that have even low arsenic levels.

You might not know it, but you likely eat more than 20 pounds of rice every year. This white or brown grain holds a traditional place at our dinner table, but it also absorbs inorganic arsenic more easily than other foods we typically eat. Regular exposure to arsenic, even at low levels, can slightly raise your risk of bladder, lung and skin cancer, as well as heart disease and Type-2 diabetes.

Recent studies evaluated arsenic in our rice supply and found most of it is, fortunately, organic. Eat less rice.