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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Jim Perdue, good arsenic, and bad arsenic: By Ray Wallace

“Four out of 10 consumers have lost trust in food. Forty percent of consumers don’t trust the food supply that feeds them,” Jim Perdue said....

Perdue Farms originally used a chemical compound to treat a parasite in the chickens’ gut. The compound contains arsenic, and even though the company spent two years explaining to consumers that there was “good arsenic and bad arsenic,” the perception was too strong.

-- From “Perdue Chairman: Dealing With Perception is Good Business,” by Jennifer Merritt, at this April 12, 2014 Lancaster Farming site:

http://www.lancasterfarming.com/news/southeedition/-Perdue-Chairman--Dealing-With-Perception-is-Good-Business--#.U10a7l5H38s

Arsenic may be "natural," but that doesn't mean it's good for you. A study in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives:

revealed that chickens likely raised with arsenic-based drugs yield meat that has higher levels of inorganic arsenic, a known carcinogen that has also been associated with cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cognitive deficits and adverse pregnancy outcomes....

By 2010, 88 percent of all chickens raised for human consumption in the US were given the arsenic-based drug roxarsone....

When you feed arsenical drugs to livestock, the arsenic doesn't just magically disappear. Instead, trace amounts of arsenic fed to chicken are excreted in their manure -- and when hundreds of thousands of chickens are raised on a factory farm year after year, the arsenic can accumulate pretty quickly, eventually contaminating soil, groundwater and surface waters.

But not all the arsenic is excreted in manure; some portion also ends up in the poultry meat that U.S. consumers eat every day....

In meat samples containing roxarsone, levels of inorganic arsenic were four times higher than levels in organic chicken....

70 percent of samples from conventional producers without policies prohibiting arsenical use had inorganic arsenic levels that exceeded the ... FDA safety standard....

Cooked chicken samples had higher levels of inorganic arsenic than their uncooked counterparts.

-- From “The Arsenic in Your Chicken,” by Chris Hunt, at this May 13, 2013 Huffington Post site: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-hunt/arsenic-in-chicken_b_3267334.html

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope people that read this post take the time to read the entire article link where Jim Perdue is interviewed. It's about more than arsenic and shows that Perdue is doing the right things.

Anonymous said...

Yes do kiss up to Perdue because if he leaves there will really be nothing left....he cares about one thing.....profits

Anonymous said...

Perdue may be doing the right things with their poultry products and putting up a solar farm - but they still use people like a resource.....

Anonymous said...

"but they still use people like a resource....."

Well, why do you think they call the personnel department "Human Resources"?

Anonymous said...

7:02. People ARE resources. Ever heard of Human Resources?

7:01. I would hope that Every business is concerned about profits. No profits, no money to grow, expand and hire or pay people. Yes. I do kiss up to Perdue. I worked there for about 8 years back in the 80s. I was fairly treated, given good opportunities and work skills that have contributed to my continued success. I always buy Perdue chicken and am grateful for my work experiences there and their huge contribution to the Shore economy.

Anonymous said...

dittos to 5:30 and 10:22. It just takes common sense. By the way, arsenic is in MANY products. Do your homework naysayers...

Anonymous said...

Within 10 years Perdue will be headquartered and its plants located in Mexico.

Anonymous said...

The bottom line is-the 'food' we are sold and eat is very far from what food is intended to be and what our bodies are made to function healthy with. It's too over processed and too many chemicals added.
I have a relative who is a Gastroenterologist. He tells his patients who refuse to change their eating habits to a more natural diet and keep having symptoms, his wife loves them because thanks to them and their bad dietary habits, she gets a new Jaguar every year.

Anonymous said...

She's not only wrong on her Perdue chicken assumptions, she's lousy at car buying value.