Imported hormone-implanted cattle supplies quality meat
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