Maryland set to ban arsenic-containing drug in chicken feed

At his family farm on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Lee Richardson raises thousands of chickens from fuzzy hatchlings to the juicy broilers stacked at grocery stores far and wide. Like a lot of farmwork, this seems simple, but it’s not.

Within each bird, a war is being waged. Parasites called coccidia threaten to eat through their guts, one veterinarian said, “like that thing in the ‘Aliens’ movie.” To fight the bug, Richardson was one of many growers who relied on a controversial remedy, Roxarsone, a drug containing arsenic. “We haven’t used it for a while now,” Richardson said recently, because Perdue Farms, which pays him to grow chickens, decided they should be arsenic-free.

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How Roxarsone, a common chicken-feed additive that contains arsenic, can enter the food chain.

For more than 60 years, poultry growers, drug companies and the Food and Drug Administration said Roxarsone, sold under the brand 3-Nitro, contained a harmless form of organic arsenic that is present in almost everything in nature, including a glass of drinking water.

That thinking was firmly contradicted last year by an FDA study that found trace amounts of inorganic arsenic in the livers of chickens that were fed Roxarsone and then slaughtered for tests. Hundreds of growers in the United States continue to use Roxarsone.

The FDA said eating chicken with traces of inorganic arsenic is safe, but its findings had a strong influence on Maryland lawmakers. Last month they passed a bill banning the use of Roxarsone and other arsenic-based drugs in chicken feed after two years of strong opposition to such a measure from the vast poultry enterprise on the Eastern Shore.

Inorganic arsenic has been linked to various human ailments, including neurological deficits in children, said Keeve E. Nachman, director of the Farming for the Future program at the Johns Hopkins University Center for a Livable Future.

Pfizer, which distributes the drug, agreed to voluntarily suspend its sales after consulting with FDA officials following the study. But growers that stockpiled supplies continue to use it.

Del. Tom Hucker (D-Montgomery), who sponsored the House version of the legislation, said the General Assembly was concerned about the levels of arsenic in chicken; about the 30,000 pounds of arsenic added each year to the soil in fertilizer and manure, mostly on the Eastern Shore; and about arsenic washed by heavy rains into rivers and streams that flow to the Chesapeake Bay.

Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) is expected to sign the bill this week, making Maryland the first state to end a practice in existence since 1944. The law would take effect Jan. 1 for hundreds of growers on the Eastern Shore that continue to use Roxarsone as an antibiotic with a side effect that bursts blood vessels, making meat look pink and plump.

“There are multiple sides to the issue,” said Kenneth Staver, an associate research scientist at the University of Maryland’s Wye Research and Education Center, who studied Roxarsone for the state House Environmental Matters Committee. “But the point was that as you add arsenic to the landscape, it accumulates in the soil. You’re making things go in a direction you don’t want them to go.”