Later this month the Environmental Protection Agency is scheduled to release new guidelines that would set limits on the safe exposure of U.S. consumers to dioxin. As with most proposals of this type, farmers, ranchers and the U.S. food industry are caught between the proverbial rock and a hard spot.
The mere mention of dioxin conjures up visions of cancer and birth defects. Dioxin became a household word nearly 30 years ago when Times Beach, MO, was evacuated and quarantined due to high levels of dioxin. Many illnesses, miscarriages and animal deaths were attributed to the toxin. At the time, dioxin was called “the most toxic chemical synthesized by man.”
Pretty scary stuff, and even scarier when you realize everyone eats a certain amount of dioxin every day. That’s because dioxins are found in meat and dairy products, and most other foods. Animals absorb dioxin, which occurs naturally in the environment and moves through the food chain via the food animals consume, especially forages. Consumed at high levels, dioxins are linked to various human ailments including reproductive problems and cancer.
The question scientists grapple with is determining how much dioxin is dangerous. Farmers and the U.S. food industry are concerned the EPA will establish a threshold for dioxin that is below the amount a typical American gets from food.
Last fall the EPA set a preliminary “safe” threshold level of 0.7 picograms of dioxin per kilogram of body weight per day. That means a person weighing 100 pounds should not consume more than 32 picograms of dioxin per day. A pictogram is one trillionth of a gram.
Food and ag groups are concerned because the “safe” number proposed by EPA is far more stringent than current international science-based standards. In a letter sent to the Obama Administration in early December, a coalition of ag and food groups said, “EPA is proposing to create a situation in which most U.S. agricultural products could arbitrarily be classified as unfit for consumption. The implications of this action are chilling.”
Steve Kopperud, coordinator for the Food Industry Dioxin Working Group, told Dairy Herd Management last week that when food groups analyzed EPA’s proposed safe number, “what we discovered was that the average consumer would exceed the reference dose.”
And that’s why this issue leaves the food industry in a pickle – oppose EPA’s guidelines and industry seems insensitive to the dangers of dioxin; accept the stringent “safe” number and virtually no food will be deemed safe.