Saw this video on a friends page today. This is a video recorded by a poultry science Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. He basically says the same things I was saying in my blog last week. It's nice to hear him talk about it though since he's a Ph.D. and speaks much more eloquently than I.
Here are his points in a nutshell if you don't have time to watch the full video (though I highly recommend giving it a watch):
Here are his points in a nutshell if you don't have time to watch the full video (though I highly recommend giving it a watch):
- Broiler chickens grow very fast. They quadruple their birth weight in the first week of life. WITHOUT HORMONES!
- Growth hormones are made of protein (like the hormone insulin). Some proteins that we eat include eggs & meat. When eaten protein hormones are broken down (ie destroyed) in the stomach, the same as the food you eat. Therefore, you can't put growth hormones in the feed (they wouldn't work). In order to deliver the hormone so it would work the chickens would have to be injected, daily (just like diabetics have to inject insulin daily).
- Normal broiler houses in the US house around 25,000 birds & you would have to go through & inject every, single one each day.
- Even if you pretend the hormone could be given it still doesn't make economic sense. A study was done with short children who were given growth hormone. For an inch of growth in the children it cost approximately $52,000. If a dose is calculated for a chicken you find that it would cost $144 to supplement growth hormone to the chicken during it's six week lifetime. A whole chicken sells for about $7 in the grocery store. As you can see that makes absolutely no sense.
- Some people express concern that there are hormones in the meat (assuming the chickens own hormones since none are fed). Since chicken is cooked at very high temperatures, no one eats raw chicken (I hope), there is nothing to worry about there.
- Lastly, next time you go to the grocery store pick up a chicken & read the label. It reads, "Federal regulations prohibit the use of hormones or steroids in poultry." No poultry producer would risk jail time to do something that won't even work anyway.