Re: dioxin in beef ...and other animals

[ttweed@wildrockies.org (Tony Tweedale)]

  William Verick wrote:
  
  > What measures can be taken by ranchers/farmers to reduce the amount of
  > dioxin accumulating in beef tissue?
  
  grain or range fed?  most would be grain fed, and you might want to trace
  the origin of the feed, but it's probably coming from multiple locations,
  in which case we are back to reducing the creation of dioxins, as
  previously suggested.
  
  paul connett tells a funny story about visiting holland, where dioxin
  contaminated milk was being incinerated--which facility was surrounded by
  grazing dairy cows!!!
  
  beware of other hormone disrupting compounds in livestock feed,
  possiblytransfered to humans:  added steroids.
  
  [actually that suddenly brings to mind a question:  how is cooked food
  handled in estimating exposure to dioxins--any assumptions they are
  destroyed?  is this reasonable?]
  
  finally, note that some estimates of dioxin exposure rely on older patterns
  of food consumption; in fact some of the population now eats substantially
  less fat (but some have just traded in untrimmed steaks & baked potatoes w/
  cream & butter for fast food of many stripes, just as loaded w/ fat).
  maybe we could use population obesity trends as a surrogate for this step
  in estimating dioxin exposure.
  
  
  tony tweedale