The government discussed lean meat powder, mistakenly conflating humans and pigs!
"Beta-agonists (commonly known as leanness-enhancing agents or "lean meat powder") that are more toxic than ractopamine (Paylean) are already added to asthma medications used in this country, so why can't they be used in feed additives for pigs and cattle? The Council of Agriculture needs to explain this clearly to the public." Premier Chen Chun of the Executive Yuan, in a newspaper interview the day before he inspected the Council of Agriculture yesterday, explained that after searching the internet for information on leanness-enhancing agents, he wondered why ractopamine, a leanness-enhancing agent, could not be approved. (Note 1)
Premier Chen's question, it is believed, is also the question of the general public. This is because the officials and experts who took part in the first meeting of the Executive Yuan's inter-ministerial technical advisory group on the US beef issue told the premier with "expertise" that: ractopamine is not a drug, but a "feed additive," and cannot be mentioned in the same breath as other highly toxic leanness-enhancing agents; over the past 10 years or more there have been no reports of livestock poisoning, nor any reports of consumers suffering poisoning from eating meat products.
However, Zhang Fei cannot fight Yue Fei. Human medication and animal feed cannot be lumped together. Premier Chen was misled by the "expert information" to which he was selectively exposed, and he in turn misled the public with a mistaken notion!
Concept one: What is the difference between drugs and feed additives?
When anyone goes to a hospital or clinic for medical treatment, if filling out medical records for a first visit, there is certain to be an item asking "Are you allergic to any drugs, and what are their names?" When the physician finishes the consultation and writes a prescription, he or she will again ask whether there is any drug allergy. If there is an allergic or adverse reaction to a specific drug, the physician will prescribe another drug that can achieve the same therapeutic effect but will not cause an allergic or adverse reaction in the patient.
But the premise for this is: a drug must undergo long-term clinical evaluation and trials by the pharmaceutical company on animals and humans before it is possible to identify the most appropriate treatment method and avoid side effects, produce a package insert, and pass review by the drug regulatory authorities before it can go on the market. Before taking it, it must also pass the checks of physicians and pharmacists so that the drug's efficacy can be maximized and the risks it triggers minimized. Therefore, although drugs are toxic, the risks are controlled.
As for the use and control of "feed additives," these are carried out in accordance with the "Regulations on the Use of Medicated Feed Additives" and the "Guidelines for the Use of Feed Additives" set by the Council of Agriculture. Feed businesses and farming households may only use the feed additives listed as permitted in the positive list of the above administrative orders, and when using them must also comply with the precautions, target animals, dosage, purpose and method of use, and withdrawal period. Only when using feed additives outside the positive list must a veterinarian, or a veterinary assistant qualified to practice, personally diagnose, prescribe, and supervise the use.
From the perspective of livestock management, distinguishing drugs from feed additives is only a difference in the intensity of administrative management, and whether veterinary oversight is needed; but from the perspective of "human health risk management," whether livestock and poultry take drugs or feed additives, there is always the issue of the "withdrawal period" that must be observed. The purpose of setting a withdrawal period is not to protect the health of the livestock and poultry, but to reduce or prevent the medicated feed from leaving residues in animal products in amounts sufficient to harm consumers. Therefore, when livestock and poultry are slaughtered, the drug residues in their bodies must fall below the residue tolerance level, or even reach zero residue. (Note 2)
Therefore, when the government discusses whether the leanness-enhancing agent "ractopamine" is a drug or a feed additive, at most it is only a difference in administrative means in livestock management, but for the human body it is all a drug; the only difference lies in the size of the health risk triggered by the amount of residue. What is more, ractopamine was originally developed to treat human asthma, so it should be treated as a drug.
Concept two: Because it is a drug, the human health risk assessment must be more comprehensive
Having substantively confirmed that "ractopamine" is a drug for humans, the next step is not only to assess whether ingestion will cause "poisoning," but also to assess whether it will cause "adverse reactions" in the human body. The scope of adverse reactions is very broad; whether drug allergies or side effects such as interactions with other drugs, all fall under adverse reactions to a drug.
At present, the conclusion of the first meeting of the Executive Yuan's inter-ministerial technical advisory group on the US beef issue repeatedly emphasized that over the past 10 years "no" cases or research reports had been found of animals or humans being "poisoned" by ingesting ractopamine, and used this to judge that the risk was very low. But in fact, this method of risk assessment has blind spots.
Wu Kun-yu, associate professor at the Institute of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene, College of Public Health, National Taiwan University, said that the definition of poisoning refers to the "immediate danger" produced by ingesting a large amount of a toxic substance in a short period of time. In the case of ractopamine, which is relatively low in toxicity, only ingesting a large amount in a short period could cause poisoning.
The problem is that ordinary healthy people are unlikely to ingest or be exposed to high doses of ractopamine in a short period of time, so using whether poisoning occurs as the basis for judging whether the risk is high or low does not conform to common sense, because people in this country only have the opportunity to ingest ractopamine by eating meat products with leanness-enhancing agent residues. Since the amount ingested in a short period is very low, the probability of poisoning is extremely small, so of course no research reports of animal or human poisoning can be found.
Wu Kun-yu stressed that the focus of risk assessment for ractopamine should be on "whether long-term human ingestion of residual ractopamine produces 'adverse reactions,'" and only assessment based on the results of such experiments can truly reflect the dietary habits of people's daily lives. At present there is still a lack of research by scientists at home and abroad from this angle, and the European Union also on this basis questions the insufficiency of relevant experimental data and research reports; with the risk unknown, it does not accept the ractopamine residue tolerance level set by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA).
Su Wei-shuo, himself a physician and former CEO of the Taiwan Medical Alliance and chairman of the Taiwan Farmers' Alliance, said that if it is a human therapeutic drug, physicians and pharmacists will still act as gatekeepers before prescribing, but if meat products with residues of ractopamine of unknown risk are allowed, physicians or pharmacists have no way of knowing during consultation whether a patient has ever eaten it; once a prescription is written and produces a drug interaction with ractopamine residues in the body and triggers an adverse reaction, who will be responsible? All these risks must be considered and assessed.
Although officials have repeatedly claimed to maintain a neutral attitude on whether to lift the ban on "ractopamine" and to leave everything to "professional consideration," if the "crisis management" undertaken in response to pressure from the US government and to quell domestic public backlash is conflated with the "risk management" that government administration should carry out through information disclosure, professional communication, and citizen participation, and political force is used to sway the risk assessment process and results, it will only make the leanness-enhancing agent issue more tangled and confusing.
Why do leanness-enhancing agents make people uneasy? by NewsMarket reporter Wang Wen-hao
Sources:
(Note 2) Gong Pei-sen: A brief discussion of the principles and precautions for the use of feed additives
United Evening News - Chen Pao-chi: Leanness-enhancing agents have nothing to do with US beef; it is a drug residue issue