Stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie…and a dangerous med?

Urgent Warning: Thanksgiving dangers for you — and Fluffy

Thanksgiving is one of our most patriotic traditions.

And I don’t want to spoil it for you, but there’s something very important that you need to know.

Our all-American turkey, the centerpiece of our holiday feast, has likely been fed a dangerous drug.

And I’m not talking about antibiotics.

This is a drug that 160 countries around the world have banned.

A drug that poisoned almost 2,000 people in China when they ate meat containing high residues of it.

And a drug that can give you a heart-pounding pulse and a big rise in your blood pressure.

Now, turkeys aren’t given this med because they’re sick, but to make them fat as quickly as possible, all while eating less. Because fat turkeys that don’t eat a lot make poultry producers a whole lot more money.

But while the FDA knows plenty about how this drug plumps up turkeys, it knows very little about what it can do to people.

Or how big a dose we might be getting along with the stuffing and sweet potatoes.

It may sound strange that an asthma drug is being fed to turkeys.

But when it was discovered that mice fed this drug, called ractopamine, became big and muscular quickly, Eli Lilly wasted no time in getting it approved by its friends at the FDA for use in food animals.

But no one at that agency seemed to worry too much about us — the people who would be eating those animals.

The only study in humans was done with six healthy young men. And one of them left the experiment early after he developed “adverse” health problems…

In fact, if you look at the label for Topmax, which is the brand name for the turkey version of this drug, it warns that “individuals with cardiovascular disease” should use “special caution to avoid exposure.”

And in big, black, capital letters is says: “NOT FOR HUMAN USE.”

So the $64,000 question is, how much of it might remain in that Thanksgiving turkey by the time it makes its way to your dinner table?

And the answer is, we really don’t know.

The FDA has set a “maximum residue limit” for the drug. That must mean they expect to find some there.

And tests done by the USDA and Consumer Reports found detectable levels of ractopamine in meat as well.

So because of all these questions, food safety and environmental groups have been trying to get the FDA to ban ractopamine for some time now.

First they tried with a petition. And they got nowhere.

So now they’re taking it to court.

At the beginning of November, three consumer groups filed a suit against the FDA saying that the agency has no idea if animals given this drug are safe to consume and that it was “unlawfully” approved in the first place.

The FDA, of course, argues that any residues will be well within its “safe” limits.

But to say that, it must have some kind of crystal ball down at headquarters, because no routine testing is done to find out how much Topmax might remain in a turkey. And they also have no idea if it’s really “safe” to begin with.

Look, I know that organic turkeys cost more. And you don’t get them free with your supermarket points.

But buying an organic bird is the only way to be sure you’re getting a turkey that wasn’t fed this dangerous asthma drug.

There are plenty of times where it really doesn’t matter whether you buy organic, so I’m the first to tell you when to save your money.

In this case, the risk far outweighs the higher price.

Sources:
“Nonprofits sue FDA claiming agency hasn’t proven safety of animal growth drug” Gretchen Goetz, November 7, 2014, Food Safety News, foodsafetynews.com

“Topmax-ractopamine hydrochloride granule” Elanco Animal Health Co, accessdata.fda.gov