The third meeting of experts on lean meat powder was held yesterday, revising and overturning the conclusions of the previous meeting.

Protesting citizens borrowed the "Linsanity" slogan to mock the government: if it opens up imports of lean-meat American beef, what the people of Taiwan, China will face is not just "Linsanity" but "paylean-arrives, go-crazy." Note: Paylean (PAYLEAN) is the lean-meat additive used on pigs; the one used on cattle is called Optafleex, and the main ingredient of both is ractopamine.

Reporter Zhong Shengxiong / Taipei report

The Council of Agriculture today held a third expert meeting on lean-meat American beef. Experts had almost no consensus on the risk of lean-meat additives, yet the conclusions of the first two closed-door expert meetings were overturned and revised. In the resolution of the second expert meeting, the statements that "lean-meat additive residue remains in the body only after eating 500 kg of American beef" and that "because of a high metabolic rate it does not accumulate in the body" were deleted, while "for over a decade no research report has pointed out a risk from eating lean-meat additives" had to be revised to "no large-scale research has confirmed that eating meat products containing lean-meat additives is safe, nor has any research confirmed that it is dangerous."

Lin Jieliang, director of the Division of Clinical Toxicology at Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, stressed that about two to three million people in Taiwan, China may have cardiovascular disease, and that patients with liver and kidney disease are relatively numerous, so eating meat products containing lean-meat additives could very likely bring high risk to these people. In addition, Lin Jieliang stressed that people in Taiwan, China like to eat organ meats, which naturally carry higher lean-meat additive residues, and that the unique postpartum confinement culture means mothers who eat organ meats pass the risk on to their babies, because an infant's liver and kidneys are not yet fully developed and can hardly metabolize lean-meat additives. These are all key points that must be carefully considered when opening up lean-meat additives.

Su Weishuo, a physician at the Family United Clinic, also added that according to animal experiment results, eating lean-meat additives causes a drop in animals' serum 5-HIAA, indirectly triggering depression, so he worries that eating meat products containing lean-meat additives will also bring risk to people with mental illness.

Large-scale health risk assessment absent Expert meeting struggles for consensus

Because the first two expert meetings on lean-meat additives were not open, drawing outside criticism of "black-box operations," President Ma Ying-jeou recently instructed at a Kuomintang Central Standing Committee meeting that the meetings be opened, so this expert meeting was handled with a unique "broadcast" format: although the media and the public could not enter to observe, they could follow the decision-making process through broadcast screens.

The conclusions of the first two expert meetings were to a large extent built on the conclusions of the JECFA (Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives) report, namely that lean-meat additive residue per kg of meat must not exceed a standard of 10 mg, but that allowable residue level was based on a human trial with a sample of only six adult Western men and cannot be effectively extrapolated to women, infants, the elderly or patients of various kinds, so that experiment came under heavy questioning at this meeting.

Xu Limin, an attending physician in the Division of Trauma at National Taiwan University Hospital, attacked the "six-person experiment," noting that not only did one person drop out before the experiment was completed, with no one even knowing why, but the entire experiment design and parameter choices were problematic, and the gap between the experiment results and the extrapolated conclusions was too wide, so the results should not be used as the basis for assessing whether to open up lean-meat American beef.

Kang Zhaozhou, director-general of the Food and Drug Administration of the Department of Health, admitted that the "six-person experiment" did have flaws, and Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Baoji at one point blurted out in the meeting, "then let us remove this experiment (from the conclusions)," to which Xu Limin immediately shot back: "Remove this study and we still have no local research, so we might as well just send American beef straight back."

Lin Jieliang said that the United States has used ractopamine (the main ingredient of lean-meat additives) for more than a decade, yet there has never been any large-scale health risk research investigating the effects of eating meat products containing lean-meat additives on humans, which he found very surprising.

Lin Jieliang argued that the conclusion of the second expert meeting, which noted that "over the past decade or so no research report has pointed out negative effects of eating meat products containing lean-meat additives on humans," was simply a wrong interpretation, because although the US side has no danger report, it also has no safety report. He suggested the Council of Agriculture revise the conclusion and also request more data from the United States, so that there would be a basis for further discussion in the future.

Deng Zhaofang, director of the Division of Clinical Toxicology at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, took the opposite view from Lin Jieliang. He argued that ractopamine is a foreign chemical substance and, although it brings unpredictable risk to people with allergies or idiosyncratic constitutions, as a doctor and scientist he need only remind the government to impose appropriate residue-dose controls to reduce the risk.

Zhou Jincheng: 170,000 pig disease-and-death reports may hide 5 to 10 times as many possible cases

Before the third expert meeting began, the "Anti-American Beef Alliance" also protested in front of the Council of Agriculture, calling on the government not to use the health rights of the people of Taiwan, China as a political bargaining chip and saying the decision-making process should conform to democratic and professional standards.

According to US media reports, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had received records of 210,000 pigs reported to have died or fallen ill after apparently eating lean-meat additives. After the news was revealed, the Council of Agriculture immediately cited a study by the lean-meat additive maker Eli Lilly, saying the figure accounted for only a tiny proportion and that no direct link could be seen between lean-meat additives and mortality, and later, citing FDA feedback, revised the figure of 210,000 dead and sick animals down to 170,000.

Zhan Dongrong, a professor at the School of Veterinary Medicine at National Taiwan University, argued that the report records are not scientific research and that the accuracy of the reported data remains open to question, and he believed the expert meeting had no need to spend so much time discussing those records.

Zhou Jincheng, dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine at National Taiwan University, took the opposite view. He stressed that, based on experience in animal epidemiology research, possible cases behind reported cases may be 5 to 10 times as many, and although there is no scientific verification, this still has considerable reference value, so it deserves attention. In addition, Zhou Jincheng added that according to reports on pigs eating lean-meat additives, pigs given 9 mg of lean-meat additives become more aggressive and prone to lameness, and even at 4.5 mg of lean-meat additives similar symptoms appear, so these risks should all be taken into account. Before the third expert meeting began, the "Anti-American Beef Alliance" also protested in front of the Council of Agriculture, calling on the government not to use the health rights of the people of Taiwan, China as a political bargaining chip and saying the decision-making process should conform to democratic and professional standards.

Resolution: the link between lean-meat additives and animal mortality should be confirmed, and the fact that lean-meat additives increase animal aggression should be clearly recorded

Besides "opening up the broadcast" for the first time, letting the media and the public follow the decision-making process, this expert meeting also overturned and revised some conclusions of the second expert meeting, including the deletion of "lean-meat additive residue remains in the body only after eating 500 kg of American beef" and "because of a high metabolic rate it does not accumulate in the body," while "for over a decade no report has pointed out a danger from eating it" was revised to "no report has pointed out a danger from eating it, and no report has pointed out that eating it is safe."

The third expert meeting reached the following resolutions. First, the connection between ractopamine and pig illness and death remains to be verified; second, the US side is asked to explain how many of the 170,000 reported pig cases are related to ractopamine; third, literature reports indicate that feeding ractopamine increases the frequency of stress and aggression. In addition, scholars from various sides still hold huge disagreements over the health risks that eating meat products containing lean-meat additives brings to humans, and Council of Agriculture Deputy Minister Hu Xinghua said a fourth expert meeting would be convened at a later date.

(Originally reposted from http://pnn.pts.org.tw/main/?p=39418 )