Maryland set to join Canada, EU in banning arsenic in chicken feed

April 10, 2012 12:00 am

By Darryl Fears?/?The Washington Post

Maryland is about to become the first state to ban use of additives containing arsenic in chicken feed, a practice already prohibited by Canada and the European Union.

Maryland's House of Delegates and Senate approved the legislation last week and placed it Monday before Gov. Martin O'Malley. The governor could sign it soon, said Del. Tom Hucker, D-Montgomery, who sponsored the House legislation.

Arsenic occurs naturally in the environment but can also be a toxic carcinogen that contributes to diabetes and heart disease. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration tested 100 chickens by giving them feed containing the additive roxarsone, an arsenic-based drug used to fight animal parasites. Half the chickens later showed trace amounts of inorganic arsenic, a known carcinogen, in their livers.

The finding prompted Pfizer to suspend sales of roxarsone, which also makes the meat appear pinker and more plump by promoting growth in chickens' blood vessels.

Perdue Farms stopped using the additive years ago, and McDonald's does not allow its suppliers to use it.

The United States produced 8.5 billion broiler chickens in 2009, according to the Agriculture Department.

Georgia was the nation's largest producer of broilers, turning out 1.3 billion. Maryland was 10th, with nearly 300 million that year, or about 1.4 billion pounds, generating 40 percent of the state's farm revenue, according to the DelMarva Poultry Industry trade group.

Growers in Maryland, particularly on the Eastern Shore, continued to use stockpiles of the feed after Pfizer suspended it, feeding about 3 million chickens per year, according to Mr. Hucker and one of the bill's supporters, Food & Water Watch.

The chickens produced about a billion pounds of waste, often spread as fertilizer. Mr. Hucker said unknown arsenic levels have seeped into Maryland's soil since the product was first used in 1946 or have washed into waters that feed the Chesapeake Bay.

But Del. Charles J. Otto, R-Somerset, who opposed the legislation, said declaring that Maryland poultry is arsenic-free "doesn't amount to a hill of beans. You don't know where your chicken comes from."

He argued that arsenic occurs naturally and shows up in extremely low amounts in chickens. "It's not an environmental threat or human health threat," Mr. Otto said. Tying it to disease "is a scare tactic," he said.

First Published 2012-04-10 04:18:46

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