Lead in processed venison

[zahnzieh]

Field and Stream just had an interesting story about processed venison having lead fragments(bullet) in it. Somebody did a study where they found 25% of processed venison had lead in it. 2% in steak cuts and much higher in deerburger. Most of it had been processed by professional butchers . I always butcher my own anyways but makes you want to really want to be careful about who does your processing!

[hogdogs]

I heard of this last year... I don't fret it much... They say lead makes ya dumb and I are that already so too late! I have opened and closed far too many lead split shot with my teeth and carried pounds of pellets in my mouth out shootin' pigeons. I do look for as much lead as possible when cleaning the game. I try to verify original amount of lead is removed as much as possible as well.
Brent

[thallub]

The guy who started that crap about lead in ground meat has no credibility.

[JWT]

The issue about dangers of lead in game has pretty much been proven false. If my memory is correct the doctor that was pushing the issue was actually a dermatolgist with some anti gun or anti hunting connections.

[Daryl]

The vast majority of the meat I eat is game taken with firearms, and I eat a LOT of meat.

I clean up the bloodshot meat, and get any bullet fragments that I can find, but I don't worry about it too much. It hasn't bothered me yet, and I've been at this for quite a few years now.

Daryl

[Kreyzhorse]

The issue about dangers of lead in game has pretty much been proven false. If my memory is correct the doctor that was pushing the issue was actually a dermatolgist with some anti gun or anti hunting connections.

Guy was a member of an organization that wanted to ban lead ammo because they felt it was responsible for killing condors. Naturally he found that big game shot with a lead bullet was not only dangerous to condors but humans as well!

Bottom line is that hunters have used lead for years and there have been no issues with lead poisoning.

[simonkenton]

Actually he was out to protect Peregrine falcons, but same thing.
The big lead problem they discovered was in burger, from commercial processors.
These guys obviously just were sloppy in throwing all the bloodshot meat into the grinder.
It is very easy to see the bloodshot portion of the deer meat, when you are cutting up a deer, and if you take a minute you can cut out the bloodshot meat, and the lead fragments and throw them out.

No way is there any lead in the deer I process. I don't want lead poisoning any more than I want to chomp down on a chunk of copper, and I don't make sausage with nasty bloodshot meat.

[SWMAGMAN]

This issue is NOT being driven by some nut with an agenda, but is under serious study in many areas. It is NOT alarmist in saying that we will all die from lead poisoning or that all lead ammo should be banned. The information which is gathered from these studies is certainly worth taking a look at, if only to find simple ways to reduce the risk. I know that we all have been eating venison and birds/squirrels/ what not full of lead for years with no ill effects...right?.....right?

http://http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/hunting/lead/index.html

[ReadyOnTheRight]

A quote directly from the above link...

...To date, no illnesses have been linked to consumption of lead particles in hunter-harvested venison. ...

But my Minnesota DNR is perfectly willing to spend my tax and hunting license money on studies about the expansion of lead bullets by bullets designed to expand. There has never been any illness, ever... BUT LOOK AT OUR COOL STUDIES ON THE EXPANSION OF BULLETS!!!!

Yes - Our money is going to fear-mongering. And it gets worse. There is a Minnesota Constitutional amendment on the ballot to constitutionaly dedicate a portion of Minnesota sales tax to more of this sort of B.S.

In Minnesota, VOTE NO to "Constitutional Amendment - Clean Water, Wildlife, Cultural Heritage and Natural Areas". What the heck do our taxes and hunting license dollars go to now??????

[JohnKSa]

This issue is NOT being driven by some nut with an agenda, but is under serious study in many areas.

I have no doubt that it is under serious study, but that does not preclude it from being driven by nuts with agendas.

http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/...d.php?t=288839

According to a brief article in the June 2008 American Hunter, Iowa, after putting it's venison donation on hold as a result of Cornatzer's "study" recently completed a scientific study and found that "donated venison poses no health risks".

As mentioned earlier, Dr. William Cornatzer is "an outspoken critic of lead ammo and a member of the Peregrine Fund, an organization supportive of California's ban on lead ammo."

According to the article, Cornatzer's "study" resulted in 4,000 to 5,000 pounds of donated venison being discarded in North Dakota. Venison that was slated to go to needy families.

[Art Eatman]

Ever since I first read about that BS, I've had a sort of vision about a bullet magically being transformed into dust, carried by that same magic throughout all the blood vessels of the animal. (Gotta be magic, since blood quits flowing after the critter is ruint.)

Ya see, none of these "studies" ever gets into the realities of HOW this lead gets into the meat, or HOW deer are butchered--or anything pertinent to the "problem".

If ya shoot 'em in the white spot, somebody explain to me how lead winds up in the hams, backstraps or tenders? If the heart/lungs are a double-handful of mush, same question...

[zahnzieh]

I see there might be people who are anti-hunting who might use this as ammo but i dont think that was the focus of the study. I think the focus is that we should watch the meat processors and above all if there is a question about the meat, dont feed it to our kids. They are a lot more sensitive to the lead.

[simonkenton]

The lead doesn't get into the hams or backstraps.
Almost all of the lead was found in burger. The commercial butchers have enormous grinders, and in their sloppy processing they throw the bloodshot meat right into the grinder, thus getting some lead fragments in there.
Then, they combine the meat from dozens of deer into one huge batch of burger.
So the deer that took a pass through shot in the lungs, and the bullet didn't fragment, and there is absolutely no lead in the meat, is tossed in the giant grinder with some contaminated meat, and the pristine meat gets contaminated also.

Another thing, the initial study by Dr. Cornatzer was done with his son, who was in med school. They got a bunch of packages of meat for the homeless and ran them through an MRI machine.
I doubt that the MRI can discern lead from copper, so a lot of what popped up on the scan was, no doubt copper, not lead.
Dr. Cornatzer may not be aware that bullets are composed of lead and copper.

One of the Yankee states is doing a big study right now that will be informative.
They are taking blood samples from 800 residents. Half are not hunters and eat only store bought meat.
The other half are hunters, or members of hunting families and they eat lots of wild game.
They will test these people and see if one group has higher lead levels.

[JohnKSa]

It's NOT an issue according to the CDC.

http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/...d.php?t=318784

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study on human lead levels of hunters in North Dakota has confirmed what hunters throughout the world have known for hundreds of years, that consuming game harvested with traditional ammunition poses absolutely no health risk to people, including children, and that the call to ban lead ammunition was and remains a scare tactic being pushed by anti-hunting groups to forward their political agenda.