You are what you eat

We’ve all read the stories about how bad bacon be no matter how delicious it is but did you know pork consumed around with world has been known to have been tainted with harmful chemicals? In China – a country where pork is the most popular meat – livestock farmers started feeding clenbuterol in pig feed in the 1980s – a steroid which eliminates fat and grows muscle, with the aim of getting the animals onto the market faster to keep up with consumer demand. This substance was then later banned in 2002 due to unpleasant and dangerous side effects. Despite this ban, it was later found that ractopamine – a chemical similar to clenbuterol – was found in pork, but only after hundreds of people fell ill.

This is not limited to just one country though. In 1999 Belgium’s food industry was hit by a series of international bans after it was discovered that livestock from the country could have been contaminated with 50 times the recommended level of the cancer-causing agent – dioxin. This led to millions of pounds worth of chicken and pork products exported from Belgium being destroyed. A couple of years later, an illegal hormone medroxyprogesterone acetate (MPA – an ingredient used in hormone replacement therapy and human birth control pills) was found in pig feed and soft drinks in 15 European Union including Belgium and The Netherlands, which were the hardest-hit, as well as Germany, France, Spain and Portugal.

The United States of America has a legal loophole that allows meat with salmonella to be sold in their supply chain. Yes, you read that correctly – bacteria-infested meat can be legally sold, along with chlorinated chicken, ractopamine-fed pigs (which has been banned by nearly every country in the world, expect the US) and bacon with additives strong enough to cripple pigs. Campaigners Soil Association in the UK has warned the British government that this dirty meat could flood the UK market if a trade deal is signed post-Brexit.