By Charles W. Moore
© 1999 Charles W. Moore
Why are Canadians so passively sanguine about the potential health risks associated with our variously chemicalized, hormone-treated, pesticide contaminated, genetically altered, and in some cases irradiated, food supply? Europeans simply wonÕt put up with being fed adulterated food. Canadians meekly accept industry and government assurances of food safety at face value.
The European Union has banned the sale of beef treated with hormones because of suspected associated health risks, as well as strong consumer resistance, and has consequently banned importation of hormone-treated meat from Canadian and U.S. producers. The two North American countries have sought redress with the World Trade Organization and won the right to retaliate by placing tariffs on European goods.
Ottawa insists that the hormones are safe, but on Òbecause-we-say-soÓ type criteria that many critics, including some of Health CanadaÕs own scientists, find questionable and unconvincing.
Last spring Health Canada scientist Margaret Haydon testified before the Senate agriculture committee that her superiors ignored her concerns about human-health risks associated with a proprietary hormone used to promote accelerated growth in cattle. Called to testify despite being under a Health Department gag order, Haydon said that the Health Protection Branch approved use of the hormone Revalor-H despite evidence that it induces early puberty and abnormal growth of mammary tissue in young female calves, while male calves receiving the hormone develop Òtremendously enlargedÓ prostate glands. In both sexes there was abnormal growth of the thymus gland which helps regulate the immune system.
At a world conference on breast cancer in Ottawa last week, Carlos Sonnenschein of the Tufts University School of Medicine at Boston affirmed that it is Òvery likelyÓ that hormone residues in North American beef is a factor in the increasingly early onset of puberty among girls. ÒThere is no other reason to explain it,Ó said Sonnenschein.
An American Academy of Pediatrics study of 17,077 U.S. girls by Dr. Marcia Herman- Giddens, et al., found the average age for onset of puberty is now nine, two years earlier than in the 1960s. In a few cases girls aged two or three have begun to mature sexually. Current medical texts say puberty begins at between 11 and 12 years, down from 14 on average in 1900. A two-year drop in the age of onset in one generation and a five year drop in 100 years is an alarming phenomenon.
Early onset of puberty translates into higher risk of breast cancer Annie Sasco, of the International Agency for Research on Cancer at Lyons, France, told the Ottawa conference that while more study is needed, it makes sense that hormone-treated beef could affect the onset of puberty.
Feedlot cattle are treated with natural and synthetic sex hormones to promote faster growth, to bring groups of cows into heat simultaneously for more ÒefficientÓ breeding, and to induce abortions. Some scientists and nutrition researchers believe that residues of hormones fed to cattle enter the human food supply. Suspected health effects of humans eating meat from hormone-treated cattle include obesity, infertility, hypoglycemia, and androgeny in both sexes (including excessive breast development in males).
Margaret Haydon told the Senate Committee that other scientists in her group shared her concern about Revalor-H: ÒNone of us would recommend this drug be approved. We were overruled.Ó The Canadian Press reported that Chiv Chopra, former acting head of Health CanadaÕs veterinary drug-approval group, testified that he received complaints about Haydon from Hoechst Canada, manufacturer of Revalor-H, whose representative accused her of Ònit-pickingÓ and wanted the hormone assessed by someone else.
Last fall, six Health Canada scientists complained of being pressured to approve drugs whose safety they questioned against their professional judgment. The Council of Canadians claims that drug companies provide 70 percent of the Health Protection BranchÕs financing, and have too much influence over the drug-approval process, and a September 1998 Canadian Medical Association Journal article noted that secrecy at the Health Protection Branch raises suspicion about the influence drug companies exert over drug approvals.
The inescapable inference to be drawn here is that the first priority of supposed government ÒwatchdogÓ agencies is to harmonize policy with the corporate agendae of the chemical industry and big agribiz (which get harder and harder to distinguish from each other). The government has chosen to follow the money and embrace the philosophy of Òinnocent until proven guilty,Ó as far as industrial food adulteration is concerned. If you think the federal food cops are looking out for your familyÕs health and safety, better think again.
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Ms. Haydon was called to testify despite being under a Health Department gag order.
If you think of Health Canada as a friendly government watchdog protecting your familyÕs health, think again. A more apt characterization would be: compliant stooge and mouthpiece for the chemical, drug, and agri-food industries.
It has been suggested (by those presumably wishing to downplay the significance of widespread precocious puberty) that the change may be attributable to Òbetter nutrition.Ó However, the notion that children these days are better nourished than generations past is highly debatable. Nutrition critics argue that todayÕs standard North American diet of heavily processed food laced with chemical additives and grown in mineral-depleted soils with the aid of artificial fertilizers and pesticides is anything but Òbetter nutrition.Ó
Whatever, a biological shift of this magnitude over such a minute period of time is not credible on the basis of diet alone, regardless of food quality. Increased use of growth hormones in cattle, as well as other sorts of hormone disrupting chemical pollution are more plausible culprits.
The clinical implications of early onset puberty are not trivial. Puberty is normally initiated by naturally-occurring estrogenic hormones in the bloodstream. There is strong evidence that breast cancer is also promoted by the presence of estrogens, to which women who go through early puberty have longer-than-normal exposure, and thus may be in greater danger.
He who pays the piper tends to call the tune, and itÕs apparent the primary interests Health Canada protects are other than the health of Canadians.
© 1999 Charles W. Moore
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