so why can you not use hormones in poultry and swine but in other kinds of livestock?

why do you want your chickens horny?

I'm surprised it is not allowed in poultry and swine although I think it tends to lead to an inferior product that is not as healthy.

it's probably got something to do with the transfer of hormones from the meat to the people eating it. Perhaps what they would use in poultry or pork is too bad for humans? The expression 'you are what you eat' is a good way to put it.

You realize because of all the preservatives in the foods we eat, an non-embalmed body will take considerably longer to decay than someone's body who ate foods with less/no preservatives?

Well at least I'll be handsomer when I become a zombie

"The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture monitors beef for hormone residues. Hormone residues in meat are not linked with any human health effect."

(i am no longer sure where i got that quote from, but i have spent the last hour reading the fda website :P)

now, i went to the fda to find out WHY you aren't allowed to add hormones to poultry or swine, and I could not find where they stated or if they even did. I read a lot about misbranding and injurious to health, yada yada yada, but i saw not, i found not, where they state WHY i'm not allowed to do it?

If you want to read the giant wall of text with subparagraphs and the like and explain it to me if you find where they state it, i would appreciate it..

http://www.fda.gov/...Legislation/ucm148721.htm

Of course *they* say it's 'safe'... Cause you know, the government is *ALWAYS* right and *NEVER* make mistakes :P.

it's to do with the time it takes to grow a chicken or pig compared with cows.

Chickens grow to maturity in less than a year, perfict "picking" is at 6 months.

pigs will take 2 -3 years at absolute most, and then they are only good for certain yuses....perfect picking is at 1 year or 6-12 weeks.

Cattle take a couple of years to generate the required sizes, in most cases the beef you eat is at least 5 years on the hoof, but it can be taken at a few weeks for white veal, or yearling for small ribs etc.

so if you hit a hormone in to get the growth happening, the residual effects or half life tend to be over the year or 2 mark, so less chance of carry into the food chain....if you grab it at 6 months, well.....mutancy will not be cool if it involves a chicken.


Alll that aside, they just genetically engineer the breeds, thats why there are choicken breeds that are numbers now. so no need for hormones, just build it into the genetic code!!!

also i compare it to how long the protein takes to break down (density) red meat will always take up to a week....if you can get a piece of chicken to last more than a week (without gassing or cryo-vac) you will have 2 very different products.
if its quick to break down, it will generally be easily absorbed into the body.

7 weeks old, weighing 2.4-4.5 lbs is market age for chickens
turkeys are around 18-20 weeks and weigh around 40 lb and are much bigger than they were 15 or even 10 years ago without hormones. It seems to me they could do the same with beef if they tryed

post

Perhaps if we didn't use preservatives, the zombie apocalypse wouldn't be so scary. After all, you always see zombies as semi-decomposed, not as full out skeletons with no flesh left. Clearly there's a certain point where there's no risk for zombieism anymore.

Damn preservatives. We either need to get rid of them or we need to all arms ourselves accordingly when Handsome Zombie Marco's trying to pick at our brains.