Guard Your Health: The Terrible Truth About the Meat You Eat

There’s danger in the meat you eat. Sounds like an advertising slogan you’d hear in a nightmare. But let the words sink in…digest the facts. When you eat that delicious, juicy lamb chop, porterhouse steak or smoked ham you may be opening the door to a death trap.

This startling and incredible fact has been revealed by one of the top cancer experts in the country–Dr. W. C. Hueper, chief of the environmental cancer section of the National Cancer Institute of the United States’ Health Service.

However, before you run to throw out that beef roast you must remember these facts.

There is nothing wrong with eating meat. The danger lies only in how the animals are fed and how the meat is prepared, processed and packaged.

And that’s where the Food and Drug Administration has let the American people down in that it has failed–partly due to ineffective laws–to prevent food manufacturers and meat producers from putting dangerous chemical agents into our foods.

The report by Dr. Hueper, which the Food and Drug Administration suppressed, shows that many meats such as chicken, fish, pork, beef and lamb may become contaminated with cancer-producing agents.

Danger in Smoked Meats

He pointed out that, in the case of smoked hams, bacons and fish, there is a potential danger in the smoking process. Danger also lurks in the plastic casings for sausages.

But probably the most sensational revelation deals with the careless–and almost criminal–use of female sex hormones to fatten chickens and meat animals. Dr. Hueper said the use of these hormones poses a growing threat to the entire nation.

The Police Gazette, in presenting these startling facts, is not trying to frighten people. It is reporting the truth as presented by an eminent cancer authority.

The Police Gazette hopes that by publishing these facts it may stimulate the public to protest to their Congressmen. Only in this way will action be taken by the proper government agencies to tighten the laws restricting the use of dangerous chemicals in food, and in this way safeguard our most precious asset–our health.

Doctor Warns

Dr. Hueper, in his detailed and documented report dealing with various types of chemical and physical agents which create cancer hazards to the general population warned:

“Recent observations indicate that foodstuff when exposed to wood smoke, such as used in smoking meats and fishes, may become contaminated with cancer-producing agents.”

To back up his warning Dr. Hueper indicated that tumors have been grown in eight of 20 mice fed with smoked bacon.

It is felt that soot and other incomplete combustion products are absorbed by the meat during the smoking process.

This carbon material has been singled out by Dr. Hueper as a possible cancer threat to human beings.

Although Dr. Hueper explains that there still is much conflicting evidence concerning how much cancer is produced from these soots, he has established the fact that a threat exists and the nation’s health authorities should be alerted to the dangers. And do something about it.

The doctor said: “It is at present purely speculative but worth investigating, whether the marked differences in gastric cancer mortality among different countries of similar nature and cultural racial and among different areas of the same country are in part casually related to local dietary factors.”

The noted cancer authority also threw up a warning flag on certain type plastics used in wrapping and coating materials.

Pointing out that certain plastics have produced cancers when implanted into rats and mice, Dr. Hueper said that these plastics are being “employed by an increasing scale in the manufacture of food containers, as inner linings of cans and as wrappings and coating materials of foodstuffs, including sausage-casings which are apt to be eaten.”

The doctor explained that although there exist as yet no counterparts in man to the “polymer cancer elicited in rats and mice by the parenteral implantation of the various macromolecular plastics, this may be due to the fact that the industrial, commercial and medicinal use of these chemicals is of rather recent date.”

He added that a latent period “sufficiently long for the development of cancers following the introduction of these polymers into man has not elapsed in most cases. The existence of asbestosis cancers of the lung, however, attests to the fact that the human organism may react to the presence of a silicon polymer with a cancerous manifestation in the exposed tissues.”

And he warns:

“It appears to be wise, therefore, as a matter of precaution to keep all occupational groups having cutaneous, respiratory and ingestive contact with these chemicals under surveillance for evidence suggesting cancer-producing action in man.”

Another cancer hazard exists in the use of certain detergents used to clean cooking utensils. Dr. Hueper said that cancer-producing surfactants may be introduced unintentionally into meats and vegetables as residues of detergents used for cleaning pots and dinnerware.

Dangers in Hormones

One of the most shocking chapters dealing with the ineptitude of the Food and Drug Administration to protect our health covers the use of female sex hormones.

These hormones, or estrogens, are chemicals used to speed up the fattening of fowl, hogs, cattle and sheep. The hormones are given to the animals either in the form of pellets implanted under the skin or added to the feed.

 

Dressed to kill: The appetizing look of dressed and processed meat often hides the presence of harmful chemicals.

 

Sounds innocent enough but listen to Dr. Hueper:

“Estrogens are recognized carcinogens for several species causing, upon prolonged administration, cancers of the breast, uterus, bladder and tissues.”

But the real indictment of the government agency comes in this shocker from the learned doctor who has conducted many experiments in cancer. He lashed out:

“Practical experience has shown that farmers and poultry men do not always follow the instructions regulating the commercial use of these biologically highly potent substances.

“They do not always insert the estrogen pellets in parts of the animal’s neck which are usually discarded, but in parts which are eaten. They implant more than one pellet of 15 mg. of estrogenic chemical, and sell their animals for human consumption before the safety period of six weeks after implantation has elapsed.”

And when damaging evidence of this sort was presented, the Food and Drug Administration secretly put the lid on Dr. Hueper’s report for fear their reckless folly might be exposed.

But meanwhile the general public continues to eat meat which contains dangerous sex pellets. You must remember that over 100,000,000 broilers are estrogen-fed as well as 50 percent of all beef cattle.

Dr. Christian Hamburger of Copenhagen, who helped George Jorgenson of New York become Christine and Charles McLeod of New Orleans become Charlotte, and who should know about those things, warns that the same might happen to men who eat estrogen-treated chickens.

The Danish doctor said that some male scientists doing laboratory work with female hormones developed womanly breasts, lost their beards and became impotent. All the effects were caused by breathing in tiny particles of female hormones.

In this country Dr. Robert E. Enders, professor of Zoology at Swarthmore College, said that any use of hormones to fatten food animals is against “the public interest.”

The Food and Drug Administration, which has permitted the indiscriminate use of estrogens to fatten poultry, should heed the warning in Dr. Hueper’s statement, which may lead to a scandalous eruption in the agency’s official family.

Dr. Hueper, seemingly shocked by what he knew, said:

“It is rather remarkable that biologically potent chemicals, which are obtainable for medicinal reasons only by a licensed physician, can be used freely in large quantities by individuals without any proper training of the potential health hazards. Especially since such practices are difficult to control adequately on a nation-wide basis in foodstuffs, handled by thousands of individual producers.”

Shocking Facts

The doctor explained that the female sex hormones have been found to cause cancers of the uterus and breast in women. He added that reports of the occurrence of cancers of the uterus following a prolonged treatment of estrogens have become more frequent in recent years.

The grim story of the cancer threat in our food has many facets. Next month the Police Gazette exposes for the first time another menace to the nation’s health.