Reply #17: The arsenic used in chicken feed is organic arsenic. (as in organic chem.) [View All]

[politicat]

It's roxarsone. (3-Nitro-4-hydroxyphenylarsonic acid) The chemical structure does not have a free oxygen or a free carbon to allow it to bond molecularly to another molecule. (i.e. it's chemically stable.) Also, roxarsone cannot be fed to chickens within 10 days of slaughter (USDA reg) and it metabolizes out of a chicken in 24-36 hours with a 20% consumption rate.

And if you will read the FDA and USDA consumer manuals (I won't force the real regs on you), you will see that a) neither chickens nor hogs can be fed hormones and the fine for doing so illegally is $50K per incident; b) neither chickens nor hogs can be fed antibiotics (including arsenic) except as treatment for an outbreak of disease, and c) cannot be sold for slaughter until after a legal waiting period after last day of administration has passed. Violation of these laws can cost a producer her livelihood - and it's not the buyer (i.e. Tyson, Hormel, etc) who takes the financial hit -- it's the producer (the little guy who is in debt up to his eyeballs). The regs are at www.usda.gov and look for the consumer guides.

And if you knew anyone who raised either chickens or hogs for market, you would know that we do care about the animals we raise, and we want our products to be safe and healthful (because we eat them too). Oh, and yeah, we want to make a living at it, because farming isn't something people do if they don't love what they're doing.

How do I know this? I'm the regs and chem expert for my family farm. Someone has to do it, and my cousin was really tired of it. (I don't blame her.)

But if you want the science behind the roxarsone....

According to the Geological Society of America (who studied this in 2002 and presented the paper in 2003) real-world data shows that roxarsone only transforms into As(V) during microbial composting of litter. Roxarsone is chemically stable after digestion (infer how that goes) and under anaerobic conditions. It is chemically stable in water and dry soil, as well. (GSA, Abstracts, Sept, 2003)

USGS studied this further, and concluded that roxarsone degrades into As(V) over time by ultraviolet radiation and microbial action. While THIS can contaminate the soil, As(V) is the necessary contaminant, not an organic arsenic. The way to avoid As(V) contamination is to use poultry litter in an anaerobic system (like those used to produce methane) rather than traditional composting.

What all of the above means is that chicken muscle doesn't degrade roxarsone. Digestion and muscle do not cause demethylization or deamination, and any hydroxylation is going to occur prior to muscle formation, rather than in muscle tissue. Under hydroxylation, the molecules that are broken break down into As(II), water, ammonia, and sodium chloride. However, 80% of the roxarsone passes out of the bird without being broken up. However, As(II) bonds with anything that has a negative 2 charge, and becomes stable again. Also, like humans, chickens require some arsenic - humans require about 1-2 mg a day, which we get through our food.

In highly oversimplified terms, to be dangerous, arsenic has to have five free electrons that can bond with another molecule. Neither soil based arsenic nor roxarsone have free electrons.

I spent six months learning these regs, and I have to update my knowledge every time an ag bill passes both houses of Congress. (I hate the Ag committees. I wish they'd learn to write simple English.) We raise soy, corn, hogs and a small number of chickens for local consumption, but enough that we have to comply with USDA regs. We're organic (as in hippie farmers, not Chem majors) because we never bothered to switch to chemicals. The farm's been in my family for over a hundred years. We rely on the fact that we're certified because it lets us make money, allowed us to keep my great-grandfather at home as he wanted and my great-uncle in a comfortable assisted living situation, supports my grandmother and my mother to an extent, and pays our (me, the farm manager, the legal manager and the accountant) salaries. It also allows us to keep the land in the family instead of selling it off for developers to put McMansions on and renovate the Historic Landmark buildings on the property.

So when it comes to chemicals, I don't depend on the lit from the chem companies to make sure what the neighbors are spraying is safe. I check it with independent agencies. And if I can't trust GSA and USGS to get their peer-reviewed science right, there's no one I can trust. At some point, I have to trust the data.

Like many people who have forgotten high school chemistry (and until I started doing this, I had forgotten it, too), this all looks very complex and scary, but sixteen year olds can balance these equations and the chemical analysis can be done at any community college or well equipped high school. But since most of us forget Chem after we take the final, we hear the word arsenic, think of the the movie about the two little old ladies, and freak.