



The data from the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service included hundreds of samples of chicken, beef, and pork that were destined for grocers, restaurants, hospitals, schools, and other food providers. And while it’s unclear how these drugs end up in meat, experts suspect it’s due to contaminated feed and intentional misuse.





The list of drugs found includes ketamine, a drug used medically as an anesthetic and antidepressant and recreationally as a hallucinogen; phenylbutazone, an anti-inflammatory considered dangerous for humans; nitroimidazoles, a class of powerful antibacterial drugs; and chloramphenicol, an antibiotic known to cause severe side effects, including potentially fatal anemia.





James E. Rogers, PhD, director of food safety research and testing at Consumer Reports and former microbiologist at FSIS, said:

These results are credible enough that you would expect the government to take the warning signs seriously. You would hope the results would prompt the agency to look into why these drugs may be present, what risks they could pose, and what could be done to protect consumers.

Sadly, the agency charged with inspection couldn’t care less about the presence of potentially deadly drugs. In fact, FSIS has gone out of its way to discredit and downplay this shocking report.









The tests also found steroids, pesticides, growth hormones, and ketamine, all of which are either not approved or explicitly banned in chicken production.









But that’s not all. At factory farms, animals are subjected to intense and horrific abuse: gruesome mutilations; cramped confinement and overcrowding; and violent, bloody slaughter. If we treated just one dog or cat the way the meat, dairy, and egg industries treat billions of animals, we’d be behind bars for animal abuse







