Consumers face difficult decisions as debate rages on effects of hormones given to cattle

Is it good or bad for us? The argument goes on

Is it good or bad for us? The argument goes on. Recently, Prof James Heffron, Associate Professor of Biochemistry at UCC, says that while there were many statistics concerning the carnage on our roads, there were no similar measurements to gauge the health effects of hormones given to the cattle which we eat.

The US says no problem, the EU has chosen to differ. The matter, Prof Heffron says, had become politicised, when more properly, it should have been relegated to serious scientific debate on both sides of the Atlantic.

Because this had not happened, there were worrying features. He wondered what the result would be when you took a healthy beast and put hormones into its feed. The US said it was quite safe to do so - the EU did not. A trade war has ensued.

Sometimes, it is said, doctors differ and patients die, but what are we to do when professors differ? The Emeritus Professor of Agriculture at UCC, and former MEP, Tom Raftery, read a "Southern Report" piece on August 3rd, and was moved to respond. He wasn't the only one.

READ MORE

He wrote: "Prof Jim Heffron, writing on the `hormone beef dispute' between the EU and the US/Canada, quite rightly said that such an issue should not be a political football - it should be settled by scientists.

"He then, astonishingly, goes on to support the EU ban on the use of hormones, which was a political decision made contrary to all available advice which the Commission had from scientific institutions such as the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) in Washington, the Commission's Scientific Committee, made up of the most eminent scientists in their disciplines in Europe, the British Veterinary Association and many more renowned institutions and individual scientists worldwide."

We saw the recent television pictures from Brussels after the first consignment of BSE-free British beef was exported again following what amounted to an international ban. Back to the question - what do we do when the experts differ? Do we eat it? Hormones, BSE, additives and what else besides? Safe or unsafe - whom do we believe? Prof Raftery has a definite opinion.

Prof Heffron, he argued, took the EU propaganda line, believing that the ban on US beef was introduced to protect European consumers. "It was not," he says emphatically. He attended an EU committee of inquiry in the late 1980s at which a senior EU representative faced Dr Lester Crawford of the FDA and several other US officials.

The then MEP says he asked several questions and was told in reply there was no evidence that the substances then in use were harmful either to animals or humans. Following further questioning, he adds, it became clear to him that the EU's ban was made for a mixture of commercial and political reasons, including "perceived concerns amongst consumers about the use of such substances".

He says there is a transcript of the dialogue at that meeting and he is willing to produce it.

"Hormone treatment is now a worldwide practice to cut costs and give leaner meat. In the US, in excess of 90 per cent of beef is hormone-treated and despite the fact that US consumers (nearly 300 million of them) have been eating 21/2 times as much beef per capita as we in the EU do, for the past 25 years, no adverse affects have been recorded. Similar experience is recorded in almost all beef-producing countries worldwide," he says.

What is the average punter with no scientific background to do about this assertion, having been inundated with dire warnings about hormones in beef and genetically-modified food?

A report by Schuman Associates was commissioned by the EU on hormones in beef and discussed by the European Parliament in December 1993. In his synopsis, Prof Raftery says the report concluded that following the ban on hormones in the EU, a widespread black market in dangerous substances, such as clenbuterol, "angel dust", developed.

The report further concluded, he says, that the risks to consumers were "probably greater than before the ban" and that costs to producers increased significantly - in Ireland's case by more than £100 million a year.

He contends also that Eurostat and Bord Bia figures make grim reading. "In 1984, the year before the controversy about hormones started, consumption in Ireland, for instance, was 23.8 kg per capita, per annum. By 1994, two years before the announcement in the House of Commons that BSE could affect humans, consumption had fallen to 16 kg due entirely, I believe, to the adverse publicity and the black market in dangerous substances. Clearly, the ban was a disaster for producers as well as increasing the risks to the consumers."

In the absence of any danger to consumers from eating hormone-treated beef, he adds, the decision by the Commission to dictate to the consumers what kind of beef they could consume amounted to "breathtaking arrogance and a violation of consumers' rights". He also notes that EU consumers, travelling outside the EU, had such a choice.

The FDA, Prof Raftery argues, is an autonomous scientific body whose decisions cannot be overruled by politicians. The EU does not have such a body but it needs one, he adds. This has already been acknowledged by senior EU officials.

He says the FDA had served US consumers well. It saved them from "the traumas of Thalidomide in the 1960s, angel dust and other dangerous substances in the 1980s and BSE in the 1990s, to mention but a few with which we are familiar".

Mr Richard Mills, the economics officer at the US Embassy in Dublin, has also written to put his point of view. A copy of his letter went to Prof Heffron at UCC.

In it, he said: "What I wanted to bring to your attention was that, in fact, careful study and research has indeed been carried out, both in the United States and Europe, on the safety of growth-promoting hormones. The US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) has been thoroughly researching the effects of the six growth hormones at issue (estradiol, melengestrol-acetate, progesterone, testosterone, trenbolone-acetate and zeranol) since the 1950s."

His letter went on: "The Centre for Veterinary Medicine at the US Department of Health and Human Services has also conducted decades of extensive research on the effects of these hormones. Neither the FDA, the Centre for Veterinary Medicine nor the other US scientific experts have found that there is essentially any difference between beef from animals raised using hormones and those raised without their use. But this consensus on the safety of growth-promoting hormones is not limited to just the United States.

"There is a clear, worldwide scientific consensus supporting the safety of these approved and licensed hormones when used according to good veterinary practice."

Mr Mills continued: "Beef from a bull (which is not castrated and to which hormones have not been administered) contains testosterone levels over 10 times higher than the amount in beef from a steer (which is castrated) that has received hormones for growth promotion.

"Since the European beef market is predominantly bullsourced, and American meat is steer-sourced, American hormone-treated beef generally contains lower levels of hormones than most levels of European beef . . . A person would need to eat over 6 kg of beef from animals treated with these hormones in order to equal the amount of those hormones in one egg.

Just to further confuse the punter, he pointed out that the US view and that of the World Trade Organisation's independent review panel was that decades of study had shown the hormone additives to be safe.

The US government had been reasonable about this, he continued, but the EU, for its part, had failed to provide clear and accurate information on the use of hormones to its own consumers.

His letter concluded: "The embassy's public affairs office manages an e-mail and postal out reach service for Irish experts on these issues, such as you, to explain US perspectives and provide access to sources of information. Ms Margot Collins manages this service" and she "may be reached at 01668 9308."