National School Lunches: Unsafe at Any Eating;
Get the Facts on April 11 at BioETHICS Chicago
Conference
CHICAGO, April 10 (AScribe Newswire) -- On
April 6, a bipartisan Congressional group, with
strong support in both Houses, announced plans to
introduce legislation amending the National School
Lunch Act. This would prohibit the sale in schools
of sugary or fatty junk foods, notably soft drinks
and French fries.
This initiative officially endorses
longstanding efforts by many school districts to
provide only healthy foods, and hopefully reduce the
growing incidence of childhood obesity and related
diseases.
Enforcement of this initiative would be
the responsibility of the U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA), which is in charge of the
current Public School Lunch Program. This extended
authority was applauded by the Center for Science in
the Public Interest, a national food safety activist
group, stating that "The Agency has done a good job
with the official school lunch and could do a good
job with all other foods." This endorsement may well
be warranted nutritionally. However, it certainly is
not warranted by the USDA's failure to disclose
well-documented scientific evidence on the risks to
health of the two school lunch staples, milk and
meat.
Much of the nations milk supply comes from
cows injected with a genetically engineered variant
of their natural growth hormone, technically known
as rBGH (recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone).
Manufactured by Monsanto, and sold to dairy farmers
under the trade name POSILAC. Injection of the
hormone forces cows to increase their milk yield by
about 10 percent, while making them sick in the
process.
Monsanto and the USDA insist that rBGH
milk is indistinguishable from natural milk, and
that it is safe for children and other consumers.
This is scientifically and medically untrue. rBGH
milk makes cows sick. Monsanto has been forced to
admit to some 20 toxic veterinary effects on its
POSILAC label. These include mastitis, resulting in
pus cells in milk, and antibiotics used to treat the
mastitis. rBGH milk is also chemically, and
nutritionally different than natural milk, and is
supercharged with excess levels of a natural growth
factor (IGF-1), which is readily absorbed through
the intestines into the blood. Of major concern is a
wealth of longstanding scientific evidence
incriminating these excess levels as delayed causes
of breast, colon, and prostate cancers.
Reacting to the fully documented
scientific evidence on the dangers of rBGH milk, a
wide range of nations including all of Europe,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have banned
rBGH milk.
U.S. beef is heavily contaminated with sex
hormones. When U.S. beef cattle enter feedlots, sex
hormone pellets are implanted under the ear skin, a
process that is repeated at the midpoint of their
100-day pre-slaughter fattening period. These
hormones increase the weight of the cattle, adding
to profits by about $80 per animal.
The hormones in past and current use
include the natural estradiol, progesterone, and
testosterone, and their more potent synthetic
counterparts, zeranol, trenbolone, and melengesterol.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the
USDA have both maintained and still claim that
residues of these hormones in meat are safe and
within normal limits.
However, confidential industry reports to
the FDA, obtained under the Freedom of Information
Act, have revealed high residues of the hormones in
meat products. Following a single ear implant in
steers of Synovex-S, a combination of estradiol and
progesterone, their residues in meat were found to
be up to 20-fold higher than normal. The amount of
estradiol in two hamburgers eaten in one day by an
8-year-old boy could increase his total hormone
levels by as much as 10 percent, particularly as
young children have very low natural hormone levels.
Increased levels of sex hormones are
linked ever more closely to the escalating increase
of reproductive cancers in the U.S., 36 percent for
post-menopausal breast cancer, 51 percent for
testicular cancer, and 88 percent for prostate
cancer, since 1975. These concerns have been
strongly reinforced by recent evidence, from
researchers at Ohio State University, that meat and
blood from cattle implanted with zeranol have
powerful hormonal effects, which resist cooking.
Europe has viewed longstanding U.S. claims
with considerable skepticism. Since 1989, all 25
European nations have banned the sale of beef from
hormone-treated cattle.
The national School Lunch Program is a
major focus of the current Midwest BioETHICS 2006
(www.bioethics2006.org) conference in Chicago. This
culminates in a Tuesday evening session on the
critical need for certified organic milk and meat to
replace the current dangerous staples. The
conference coincides with the national Biotechnology
Industry Organization, which aggressively promotes
the industrialization of the nations food supply.
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CONTACT: Samuel S. Epstein, M.D.;
Professor Emeritus, Environmental Medicine,
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public
Health; Chairman, Cancer Prevention Coalition;
312-996-2297
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