Animal-Fat Dioxins Pose Risk, Group Says

WASHINGTON -- An independent health policy institute Tuesday warned all Americans, but particularly young women and children, to avoid consuming dioxins -- long-lasting compounds in the body fat of animals that have been linked to endocrine-related conditions, developmental problems and susceptibility to cancer.

The Institute of Medicine, a nonprofit organization that provides health policy advice under a congressional charter, also suggested that the federal government “develop and implement an integrated risk-management strategy and action plan to reduce human exposure to dioxins in foods.”

Dioxins are found in the fats of meat, poultry, fish, whole milk and full-fat dairy products.

The Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments, which asked for the study, did not request the exact risk of exposure or the current amount of the compound in foods and animal feeds, and the institute did not provide them.

Instead, the report’s authors asked administrators of the government’s school lunch program to increase the availability of food and milk low in animal fat. And they suggested that young women, especially pregnant and pre-childbearing women, minimize their intake of these foods to reduce exposure by fetuses and nursing infants.

Linda Greer, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s environment and health program, said she was disappointed by the recommendations.

“They didn’t recommend federal regulation -- anything that limits the amount of dioxins in food,” Greer said.

“Rather than making food safe, they are opting to educate people that food may not be safe, and I think they owe us more than that. This is the government abdicating responsibility for a safe food supply.”

Greer said the report should have explicitly recommended which foods should be restricted from sale and which practices by producers should be banned.

Robert Lawrence, the chairman of the committee that wrote the report, said the Institute of Medicine did not want to get ahead of the federal agencies that would have to implement any regulations.

“The big challenge is that we are recycling about 11 billion pounds of dioxins each year back into animal feed -- from trimmings at the slaughterhouse,” Lawrence, who is also a dean at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said in a telephone interview.

“If we could interrupt this recycling, we could achieve a significant decrease. But it also represents a huge disposal problem. If we burn [the trimmings], the dioxins can be released into the air.”

He said more research must be done to determine safe means of disposal.

Lawrence added that producers were not economically motivated to control dioxin intake by their animals because it makes their beef, chicken and pigs grow to market size more quickly.

Another author of the report, Michael Taylor, said the next step in government involvement would be a risk-assessment process established by the Environmental Protection Agency, which has regulatory responsibility.

Greer said the EPA was hesitant to release the numbers because they are higher than the levels that most people consume.

To reduce consumption, researchers recommend leaner cuts of meat and low-fat dairy products. Pacific and Atlantic salmon are low in dioxins, Lawrence said, and swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish have large amounts.

Dioxins are the toxic components of Agent Orange, the chemical that was used to clear forests during the Vietnam War and that caused the evacuations of Times Beach, Mo., in 1983 and the Love Canal site in Niagara Falls, N.Y., in 1978.