Imported hormone-implanted cattle supplies quality meat

By Mangku Sitepoe

JAKARTA (JP): The government has recently decided to satisfy the rising demand for meat by importing meat and live cattle, which will, upon arrival here, be slaughtered.

These live cattle, known as feeder cattle, are between 1.5 and two years of age and weigh a maximum of 350 kilograms. Feeder cattle are usually castrated in the exporting country. In countries where certain types of hormones are still used as growth promoters, like in the United States, Australia and Japan, feeder cattle are given hormone implants to promote growth. In Indonesia and all member countries of the European Economic Community such practices are forbidden. In Indonesia, hormones may be used in medical treatments, and this is permitted only if there are specific reasons requiring this practice.

There are various ways to raise production and improve the quality of cattle meat. One of these ways is to use growth- promoting hormones, either natural or synthetic, in cattle feed or through implants.

Hormones raise cattle production in terms of daily weight gains and efficiency in feed conversion. This can be accomplished, for example, by placing the diethyl-stilbisterol (DES) hormone implant behind the ears of cattle. The result of using this hormone is that cattle's daily weight gain will rise by 15 percent compared with the weight gain recorded when no hormone is used. The hormone also changes feed conversion from 11 to nine, meaning that the use of this hormone reduces the quantity of feed a head of cattle must eat to yield 1 kg of meat from 11 kg to 9 kg.

Growth-promoting hormones are also beneficial because they improve the quality of the meat. These hormones help increase the formation of the meat's protein and reduce the fat in the tissue of the meat which will be consumed. For example, the revalor hormone improves the ratio between protein and fat in meat in the thigh area from 37:63 to 67:33. Local meat, which does not receive hormones, has a fat content of 10 percent, while meat from cattle given the revalor hormone has a fat content of only 4 percent. Meat which is high in protein and low in fat is highly desirable. Such meat is also in line with recommendation made by the World Health Organization that fat consumption must reach no more than 30 percent of total calories.

Growth-promoting hormones are introduced to livestock either through cattle feed or implants, with the latter being the more popular method. The implant is usually placed on the back of the ear. Only 100 days after the implant is introduced can cattle be slaughtered. In this case, only the meat is safe for human beings to consume. Other parts, known as offal meat, must be avoided because they contain unsafe levels of the hormone.

The permitted level for the trenbolone acetate hormone, for example, is 50 parts per billion (ppb)/1 gram of meat in the U.S., and 20 ppb/1 gram of meat in Japan. If a male ox is given an implant of 300 milligrams of trenbolone acetate, 100 days after it receives the implant meat from the thigh area will have around 0.30 ppb, the liver will have 0.39 ppb, the kidneys will have 0.11 ppb, fat and the skin will have 0.24 ppb, roasted beef testicles on skewer will contain 1,200 ppb, oxtail soup will have 6.22 ppb and the ears will have 6.12 ppb. (Heitzman & Harwood, 1997)

So if you eat 100 grams of thigh meat every day, you ingest 30 ppb of the trenbolone hormone. This amount is still below the tolerable threshold in the United States, but is above the allowed level in Japan.

If you eat 1/3 of one skewer of roasted beef testicles (the equivalent of 100 grams) every day, you are ingesting 120,000 ppb/day of the trenbolone hormone, a quantity large enough to cause hormonal disturbances. Likewise, you will take in a total of 622 ppb/day of the trenbolone acetate hormone, far above the permitted threshold, if you eat 100 grams of oxtail soup each day.

Eating meat containing growth-promoting hormones speeds up sexual maturity. Children will reach puberty much earlier than usual, perhaps at as early as the age of nine. According to a 1982 report from Puerto Rico, 7-year-old children were already thinking about getting married, and it was also reported that a 9-year-old girl had already given birth to a baby. These cases might be the results of eating meat from cattle which had been given growth-promoting hormones without heeding the tolerable thresholds.

Also, diethyl-stilbisterol growth-promoting hormone may cause cancer. This is why the hormone has been banned in the United States since 1979. Formerly, DES was used to promote the growth of fowl, cattle and sheep.

In short, ingesting amounts of growth-promoting hormones above the permitted threshold may adversely affect human health.

In the case of Indonesia, we must first acquaint ourselves with how meat is usually consumed here. Usually all parts of the ox are eaten: the snout and the ears may be used in vegetable or fruit salads with slices of beef snout, popularly known as rujak cingur; the brains may be turned into brains curry; the skin may be used to make chips of beef rinds; all the innards may be cooked into tripe soup; the testicles may be roasted on a skewer; the tail may be eaten as oxtail soup; the foot may make a beef foot soup; the liver may be fried in spicy sauce; the lungs may be turned into chips; and so on.

If growth-promoting hormones are used, all the parts of the cattle referred to above will be categorized as offal meat, which human beings should not eat because the level of growth-promoting hormones in offal meat is above permitted levels.

If cattle which are given growth-promoting hormones are slaughtered earlier than 100-days after receiving the hormone, which could be the case of imported cattle which are slaughtered without first being fattened, the level of growth-promoting hormones in the meat and in the other parts of the body will be higher.

-- The writer is a physician and veterinary surgeon