Reprinted from a Dec 21, 2008 column in the Morgantown Dominion Post
Now that you’ve got that deer in the freezer, is it safe to eat? You may recall that four months ago I wrote about the finding of lead bullet fragments in deer meat in North Dakota, and the fact that the venison donated to soup kitchens was taken off their shelves.
Since that time there have been two studies in Minnesota and North Dakota, looking at this potential lead problem. Last summer Minnesota officials found lead bullet fragments in 22 percent of the samples taken from soup kitchens and other donated meat programs. They also found lead fragments as far as 18 inches away from the impact point on the deer. This fall, they mandated that all butchers involved with their meat donation programs had to take a special training course, to lower the chances of getting lead in donated meat. They also only accepted whole meat because the ground venison had more bullet fragments. How did these changes work out?
Results showed that using the above conditions, lead bullet fragments were only found in 5 percent of the samples. Sounds pretty good, but the Minnesota officials have now decided that all meat donated to soup kitchens must be X-rayed at a cost of .30 cents a pound. The state already pays butchers $70 per deer for all donated animals. While Minnesota may be able to pay this amount to get meat to the needy, most states can’t afford to do that. In fact, with fewer butchers now participating in their program, the numbers of donated deer in Minnesota should drop substantially, seriously impacting feeding the needy.
Are these restrictions necessary? Do these lead levels mean there is a human health hazard?
Based on findings of a North Dakota study, they do not. After lead was found in venison sampled at North Dakota soup kitchens, the state asked the National Center for Environmental Health to sample the lead in blood of 740 North Dakota citizens. While waiting for that study to be completed, North Dakota officials decided to only allow bow-killed deer to be donated to soup kitchens, again seriously impacting the number of citizens that can be fed. Obviously bow-killed deer will not have lead fragments in the meat.
I went on-line and got a copy of the blood study, and the results lead me to believe that there is not a serious health issue for hunters or anyone else consuming venison. Here is what they found. Eighty-one percent of those citizens sampled consumed wild game during the previous year. Of those, 87 percent consumed venison and 83 percent had eaten venison within the month preceding the blood sampling. Most (82%) butchered their own deer and 62 percent consumed venison once a week.
Citizens who consumed wild game had higher lead levels in their blood than those who did not eat wild game. Those who didn’t eat wild game the month before sampling had lower lead levels than those who had eaten wild game that month. If they ate a 2 ounce or more serving of wild game, they had higher lead levels than if they had eaten smaller servings. This all sounds pretty bad, except for the fact that no person sampled in this study had lead levels higher than those the Communicable Disease Center recommends for safe consumption. Still further, and most interesting, the average lead levels for all citizens sampled in North Dakota was lower than the average lead levels found in the population of the United States.
Even so, we know that lead is a serious health hazard that accumulates in our bones. Young children and pregnant women are especially susceptible to it’s effects. There is no question that gun hunter-harvested venison has some lead in it, and that those eating venison at soup kitchens are exposed to this. If they consume large amounts of venison, more than the average North Dakota venison eaters, there may be a health problem. If meat processors are trained, as in Minnesota, and donated meat is limited to whole packages rather than ground meat, is the five percent of samples that tests positive, combined with the North Dakota results that shows that the average venison eater has less lead in their blood than the average United States citizen, a major problem?
I don’t think so. If soup kitchens only serve venison once or twice a week, take care in butchering the deer, and restrict consumption of meat to children and pregnant women, there should be no problems. Will soup kitchens be impacted throughout the country until the gun industry eliminates lead in bullets? Definitely, and that is a shame. Hunter-donated venison has provided millions of meals to people needing food. Yes, there are trade-offs operating here. Is the small amount of lead contamination from venison more of a health hazard than not getting adequate food? If soup kitchens cannot use venison, then their food costs go up and they would have to cut some services to offset that cost. Until there are data showing a health hazard for those eating venison, I’d go along with what almost all states are doing, using venison to help feed the needy. But as I said in my July column on this topic, the time is coming when lead bullets will be eliminated. Sooner may be better than later.
