The Drug Store in American Meat

Food consumers seldom hear about the drugs oestradiol-17, zeranol, trenbolone acetate and melengestrol acetate and the names are certainly not on meat labels. But those synthetic growth hormones are central to U.S. meat production, especially beef, and the reason Europe has banned a lot of U.S. meat since 1989.
Zeranol, widely used as a growth promoter in the U.S. beef industry, is known for its “ability to stimulate growth and proliferation of human breast tumor cells” like the “known carcinogen diethylstilbestrol (DES),” says the Breast Cancer Fund, a group dedicated to identifying and eliminating environmental causes of breast cancer.  Zeranol may “play a critical role in mammary tumorigenesis” and “be a risk factor for breast cancer,” agrees a recent paper from the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering at China Agricultural University in Beijing.

Read more: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/28/the-drug-store-in-american-meat/