Rob Stein writesat The Washington Post, “A drug that farmers have given to chickens for decades is being pulled off the market after federal scientists found a potentially carcinogenic form of arsenic in the livers of animals treated with the substance.”
The drug is 3-Nitro and is produced by Pfizer. The FDA studythat found the arsenic danger in 3-Nitro said “Published scientific reports have indicated that organic arsenic, a less toxic form of arsenic and the form present in 3-Nitro® (roxarsone), an approved animal drug, could transform into inorganic arsenic.”
Administering drugs to chickens, even so-called “free range” chickens is not uncommon. As Dick Young noted on this website when he wrote Wow! Free Range Chickens, “It is clear that most free-range chickens are loaded with antibiotics and growth-promoting drugs. Talk about a festering stewpot. Feed these top-heavy, sad birds a crummy diet of industrial food and animal by-products and you may as well be dining on field rats. No thanks.”
