Refusing to eat lean meat powder is a health right that consumers should have

When you eat meat, do you prefer fatty meat or lean meat?

People today are afraid of eating fatty meat and want their meat to be a little "leaner" - it tastes better and feels healthier. Lean meat powder (lean meat enhancer) is a drug added to feed; once cattle and pigs eat it, the proportion of lean meat can be increased, and sales rise too.

There are many kinds of lean meat powder. Ractopamine (Paylean), which was recently "formally named" by the Department of Health, can be used legally in the United States. Chou Chin-Cheng, dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine at National Taiwan University, said that ractopamine was originally an asthma medication, but its effects were poor; unexpectedly, it was found to have a "lean meat" effect, able to burn off fat and make muscle fibers swell and grow larger. If it is added to feed continuously for four weeks starting six weeks before cattle and pigs are slaughtered, it can reduce fat and increase lean meat.

But lean meat powder is a non-natural product. It cannot extend shelf life, inhibit bacterial growth, or treat disease; it is used only to make meat look better. Moreover, with no formal, large-scale human risk assessment studies, whether it will place a burden on the human body in the future remains unknown. That is why more than 160 countries ban its use, far more than the 26 countries that permit it, and Taiwan also bans its use entirely.

Many people question whether opening up lean meat powder was ever simply a matter of "whether it can be added" or "whether to import it"; it is a complex issue tied up with diplomacy and trade policy. But for the whole public, this is simply the purest food safety issue. When we stress returning to natural diets and eating fewer additives, why not maintain the "zero lean meat powder" stance we have held for more than ten years?

This article interviews Chou Chin-Cheng, dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine at National Taiwan University, and Huang Yu-Sheng, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, using a Q&A format to explain the health risks the public will face after lean meat powder is opened up.

Lean Meat Powder Q&A

The risks of opening up lean meat powder, explained so you understand it at a glance!

Q Some scholars point out that over more than ten years, no one in the countries that permit its use has been poisoned, which shows lean meat powder is not a problem?

A  Chou Chin-Cheng, dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine at National Taiwan University,points out that when lean meat powder was originally used as a drug, human trials were conducted on only six people, and one of them even dropped out of the experiment because of heart palpitations. Not only was the sample size insufficient, but this was not a formal food experiment either. So over the years, even if someone felt unwell from eating lean meat powder, they would not connect it to aftereffects caused by lean meat powder. Moreover, aftereffects may appear ten or twenty years later, which is also why the EU insists on opposing imports.

Q If lean meat powder is unhealthy, why are more than twenty countries willing to permit its use?

A Looking at the 26 countries that currently choose to permit it, most are countries whose main business is livestock exports. Huang Yu-Sheng, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, stresses: "If you can choose natural, healthy food, why take the risk? Only 40 percent of US beef and 60 percent of US pork use lean meat powder, and in the past the US has also always exported beef without lean meat powder to Taiwan. Why can't it do the same in the future?"

Q Rather than having domestic operators secretly use more toxic lean meat powder, wouldn't it be better to permit the less toxic ractopamine (Paylean)?

A Huang Yu-Sheng retorted bluntly, "That idea is flawed!" "The government cannot manage operators who secretly use banned drugs, yet wants to solve the problem by permitting a 'safer' banned drug?" Even if ractopamine is "not that toxic," do not forget that citizens have the right not to eat toxic meat, and this should also be the government's obligation.

Q If it is opened up, would it be feasible to label US beef containing lean meat powder with its place of origin to distinguish it from other beef, imitating Japan's "dual-track model"?

A Chou Chin-Cheng explained that in Japan, beef with lean meat powder is sold in a "special zone, special sale"; the whole cut of meat is not cut up and put into the market, so Japanese domestic beef is more popular with consumers and fetches a higher price. By contrast, before the government had even opened up lean meat powder, in the past two weeks domestic hypermarkets successively appeared illegally selling meat containing lean meat powder, showing that the "three controls and five checks" previously drawn up for US beef were never actually implemented, and Taiwan's food control system is worrying. Once it is opened up, how can control be done well?

Q Even if imports are opened up, can't people just choose to buy beef without lean meat powder?

A Once cheap US beef with lean meat powder enters Taiwan, where will it go? Besides being made into processed meat products, it will also be used by the military, which must keep costs down, and it may appear in traditional markets, night markets and restaurants as well. Consumers will find it very hard to choose not to eat it. In addition, because beef is currently more expensive, it rarely appears in school lunches, but once cheap lean-meat-powder meat comes in, it may become one of the options for catering companies.

Q If imports really are opened up, what should the government do?

A The media estimates that there will be two future points when it could be opened up. The first is after the president is inaugurated on May 20; the second is in July, when the World Health Organization sets a "permissible residue level for lean meat powder," which Taiwan would then need to comply with, making opening up seem only natural. Huang Yu-Sheng does not think Taiwan needs to rush to open up imports ahead of the EU.

But the unknown risks of lean meat powder are too high. He suggests that its use should first be banned in school lunches, and that attention should be paid to the high threat lean meat powder poses to people with cardiovascular disease, strongly demanding that food businesses strengthen warning labels. "What worries people is that once beef is opened up, pork containing lean meat powder will before long also be forced open, and since citizens have the habit of eating organs, the risk from eating lean meat powder may be higher than in the United States itself."

Q Since US beef imports are a bargaining chip in the government's trade negotiations, is it extremely foolish to frame US beef as a health issue?

A US beef is indeed a health issue. It is like artificial coloring, purely meant to make meat "look good." Although some people use cigarettes as an example, arguing that once warning labels are printed, the right to buy lies in consumers' hands, and people who want to smoke still smoke as usual. But if US beef is labeled as containing lean meat powder, can people then also choose not to buy it? It must be reiterated that once it is opened up, consumers' right to choose disappears as well. Processed meat products, eating out, school lunches and military catering will not label whether the beef they use contains lean meat powder, yet consumers will have no choice but to eat it.

Taiwan and the United States are different. Taiwan bans it while the United States permits it. While many businesses work hard to produce safe meat, why should we instead open up meat that raises health concerns? Cheap US beef is definitely not for people who need TIFA or visa-free US travel to eat; it is the disadvantaged, busy making a living, who will buy it, and the military and other catering operations that will use it. Should the right to health of these people be abandoned? Health is a human right, not a condition for diplomatic negotiation. Toward this kind of civilizational regression, every citizen has both the right to know and the obligation to refuse.

Further Reading

When the government discusses lean meat powder, it mistakenly lumps humans and pigs together!  by NewsMarket reporter Wang Wen-Hao  2012.02.17
In conducting a risk assessment of lean meat powder, the focus should be on "whether long-term human intake of meat with ractopamine residues causes 'adverse reactions,'" which is what can truly reflect citizens' daily eating habits. So far, no scientists at home or abroad have been found to have studied it from this angle, and the EU uses this to question the insufficiency of the relevant experimental data and research reports; with the risk unclear, it does not accept the permissible ractopamine residue level set by JECFA. Premier Chen Chun and Council of Agriculture officials, in recent interviews, judged whether to open up lean meat powder using only "high or low toxicity," which is like Zhang Fei fighting Yue Fei - mistakenly lumping humans and pigs together!

Why does lean meat powder make people uneasy? by NewsMarket reporter Wang Wen-Hao  2012.02.13
While officials and experts explain to citizens that "ractopamine" differs from other lean meat powders in being less toxic and faster to metabolize, so that even residual meat is comparatively safe, a report by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shows that from 2002 to March 2011, ractopamine had already caused the death or illness of more than 218,000 pigs, a death or illness rate far exceeding that of other animal drugs on the market. In addition, the EU food safety authority also questions that the number of human trials of "ractopamine" is too small, and that its safety remains greatly in doubt, so it is unwilling to relax the ban on its use. This information deserves citizens' attention.