Disease Proof

It seems the pursuit of bigger plumper chickens might be biting—or should I say pecking—us in the behind. Apparently arsenic added to chicken feed since the 1960s poses a serious contamination risk. Don Hopey of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:

Organic arsenic is added to the feed of some 70 percent of the 7 billion roasters grown annually in the United States. The inorganic arsenic is found in poultry waste, which is used as fertilizer.


That increases the risk that the inorganic arsenic will contaminate surface water and groundwater drinking supplies in farming areas where the chicken litter fertilizer is spread repeatedly, said John Stolz, professor of biology at Duquesne and co-author of the study reported in January in the peer-reviewed Environmental Science & Technology Online News.

Gee, who would have thought? Arsenic bad? What a revelation! Good thing I don’t eat chicken anymore.