Hormones in Beef: The Rest of the Story

Alright, so I want to talk a little bit about hormones in beef cattle.  I mean we all know a lot about them, mass media tells about them almost daily, about how they are bad for us and how they increase the risk of cancer.  But what has always puzzled me is why we only hear about hormones in the beef industry, and about how hormone consumption in beef is going to kill us.  Well I want to tell you a little bit of the rest of the story.  Yes, it is true conventionally raised beef does contain hormones.  It contains 1.9 nanograms per 3 ounce serving.  This is compared to all natural certified organic beef which contains 1.5 nanograms per 3 ounce serving.  That is a difference of .4 nanograms per 3 ounce serving.  That is decimal point with eight zeros and a four behind it (.000000004).  There is not much of a difference.  Now compare that to a food like soybeans.  Soybeans contain phytoestrogens which have been proven to be hormonally active in humans, per three ounce serving of soybean oil there are 168,000 nanograms of phytoestrogens.  Per three ounce serving of cabbage there are 2016 nanograms of estradiol.  Both of these foods contain no meat and are used frequently in vegetarian and vegan diets.

According to USDA numbers an average per capita 60 pounds of beef is consumed per person per year in the United States.  That works out to be 320-three ounce servings per year per person.  Which in turn comes to approximately 1077.17 nanograms of estradiol per year from beef consumption.

Now I want to compare that number to something that is practiced by thousands of women every day in the United States: birth control.  What I have here is a progesterone based birth control product.  It contains .035 mg of estradiol per pill and is based on a 28 day cycle so there are 21 active pills in a dispenser of this product.  If you consider a woman who uses this product for one year, that is 252 pills or 8,820 nanograms of estradiol per year.  Remember the amount estradiol per year from beef was 1077 nanograms per year. Approximately eight times more estrogen from progesterone based birth control than from beef. Now let’s consider a woman who takes an estrogen based birth control pill. They contain 35,000 nanograms of estradiol per pill which for the same 252 pill year works out to be 8,820,000 nanograms of estradiol per year.  That is approximately equal to 875,868 lbs of beef.  Or on a hot carcass weight basis, that is like eating 1100 steers per year per person.  That works out to be just a little over three steers per person per day.  So in summary for every one pill of estrogen based birth control consumed it is like eating 3 whole cows by yourself, daily. 

If you want to trim hormones out of your diets, beef should probably not be the first place you look. 

Thanks for reading and please let us know if you have questions and leave your comments below!

~ Nick Henning

Hormone Casserole

I've seen some prevalent advocacy being done by a veterinarian from my home county, Haskell County, Kansas, lately. Dave Sjeklocha (pronounced like "so close ya" almost missed it!) is a DVM at the Haskell County Animal Hospital and I have seen his response to hormone usage in food production to many articles on the internet. This is his response, as a licensed veterinarian, and it has been posted on several parenting sites, the Wall Street Journal, among others.

He breaks down a response to the hormone debate in a way that consumers, like myself, can easily understand! I also trust his break down because he is the veterinarian working with cattle producers to regulate the use of growth-promoting hormones in production. Great job Doc Sjeklocha!!!

• Hormones: Growth-promoting hormones used in beef production include estrogens, trenbolone acetate (TBA) and melengestrol acetate (MGA, progestin). Estrogens are the most commonly used.

• Safety: Growth promoting hormones in cattle production have been declared safe by several scientific organizations worldwide. These would include the Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization, the European Commission Agriculture Division and the Codex Committee on Veterinary Residues.

• Hormone levels: Hormone levels are measured units called nanograms. A nanogram is one billionth of a gram. Three ounces of beef from a steer that was raised with growth promoting hormones contains 1.9 ng of estrogen. Three ounces of beef from a steer that was not raised with growth promoting hormones contains 1.3 ng of estrogen. Three ounce servings of other foods would contain the following levels of estrogen:
• Soybean oil 168,000,000 ng
• Milk 11 ng
• Potatoes 225 ng
• Ice cream 520 ng
• The human body naturally produces many hormones. Estrogen is just one of those hormones. Levels of estrogen in the human body would be as follows:
• Non-pregnant woman 480,000 ng
• Pregnant woman 3,415,000 ng
• Man 136,000 ng
• Male child (pre-pubertal) 41,500 ng
• Female child (pre-pubertal) 54,000 ng

• Summary: Growth-promoting hormones used in beef production have been scientifically tested and proven to be safe. When compared to levels in other foods, or to levels naturally occurring in the human body, beef hormone levels are very low. Also, the use of these hormones helps to conserve our natural resources by improving the efficiency of beef production.

I'm making a casserole tonight for dinner that contains: meat, potatoes, corn, green beans, carrots and some milk products. I might just change the name of the recipe because it is clearly a hormone casserole! Now that I have read Doc Sjeklocha's response, I know that it is a naturally occurring hormone in a lot of the foods I eat.

My best,

Tera Rooney

Hormones in meat are the reason why people are reaching puberty early. Right???

Not quite so fast. Puberty is a result of reaching a certain weight and has nothing to do with the age of the individual. Once a person reaches a certain physical weight, the body tells itself that it has reached a mature enough level to move on to the next phase of production. Obesity percentage has been consistently increasing throughout the year, especially here in the United States (Figure 1). This increase coincides with the decrease of physical activity as shown in Figure 2. There are several reasons why activity levels have decreased but most of them have been associated with the level of technology. Whether you believe this is good, bad, or indifferent, it is what we have to work with each and every day.

Figure 1. Obesity Level

Figure 2. Physical Activity

So now you may be asking yourself, “Why do producers use hormones?” Producers use hormones to add to the effects that are already naturally occurring inside the body to increase production. All food that you eat has hormones in it, even if no artificial hormones were added. Hormones do not affect the quality or taste of the product either so it is a win-win situation.

As my fellow colleague Tera pointed out, the consumption of food has been dramatically increasing especially in meat and eggs. This is in large amount due to the fact of population growth. Figure 3 shows that by 2050 that there will be an estimated 10 billion people in the world. 10 billion people! We will have to be able to feed all of these people too. The best way to do this is to use hormones to get more production out of our current animals.

Figure 3.

The next time you go to the grocery store and see the advertisements, “No hormones added,” or “Hormone free,” remind yourself that there are still the same level of hormones in these products compared to the commercial products.

Take care,

Miles Theurer