This is Lead Week on this blog.
The lead levels in game meat are due to the fact that they have lead shot propelled into them to kill them. Other forms of ammunition are available and are used widely in other parts of the world for shooting game for food or fun.
The trouble with lead from the point of view of poison levels in meat, is that we know, and have known for 6-7 years at least, that small, really small, tiny, fragments of lead split off a lead pellet passing through the flesh of a Red Grouse (or Pheasant or partridge or duck etc). You can’t see most of these and you won’t find them by crunching your meat very carefully either.
Here’s an X-ray of a partridge (not sure which species):
You can see five largely intact lead pellets – the round things! In this study, these pellets would have been removed either by searching for pellets in the cooked meat, or by X-raying the meat to remove any pellets not found by searching (they are very small) before analysing for lead content. In real life, you would either remove them by spitting them out, or more politely putting them on the side of your plate, or quite often you wouldn’t encounter them at all and you’d swallow them and they would add to the lead content of your meal as some of their mass dissolved in your guts and was absorbed into the bloodstream.
You can also see some big arrows: either red or greenish. The greenish arrow points to what is probably a fragment of bone. In real life, it is very easy to distinguish between lead fragments and bone fragments on the X-rays. The bone fragments are dull compared with the very bright lead fragments, some of which are pointed out with red arrows here.
The lead fragments are very small and can travel a long way (inches) from the path of the pellet from which they are shed. It seems odd perhaps, but it’s true. Once you’ve seen a few of these X-rays you get used to it.
Here’s another X-ray, this time of a Red Grouse, though not of one of the Red Grouse analysed in this study:
One very obvious pellet here, and lots and lots of pellet fragments.
Here’s another Red Grouse:
Again, there’s a very obvious pellet, a couple of bone fragments indicated by greenish arrows and many lead fragments shown with red arrows.
So the point of this post is to show you that tiny pieces of lead spread through the flesh of a shot bird. These are what load the meat of a gamebird with lead – a poison. You can’t see most of them, and you can’t remove them either by tentative eating of your delicious meal, or by clever butchery.
If you swallow lead shot because you haven’t bothered to remove them, or tried and failed to detect them, then your lead input will be higher than indicated by this study.
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Mark, this is great to see. The main point in this petition by Rob Sheldon is that it is non political. There is no good reason why any politician should oppose the replacement of lead with non toxic ammo. More importantly, there is no reason why NGO’s should not get involved and promote lead’s replacement. (Yes, even the NT).
All areas of the media should get involved in this, even the fishing magazines. After all, Fishermen had lead weights banned years ago, so why are shooters being treated differently?
It is completely baffling that this petition has not gained the support of NGO’s already, it makes me think I’m missing something. Or is it….could it be, that if you start talking of lead shot and shooters, it might highlight other areas of the ‘industry/sport’ that some may not want highlighted? Nah, can’t be that.
Mark, could I ask, that at the end of every blog, you put in the link to the petition, as you did for DGS.
As for another of your petitions, the answer must be yes, but maybe wait to launch it at the next HH day.
The only thing I would highlight about e-petitions is that whilst 10k signatures will get you a response, the site clearly states that 100k COULD result in a debate, not will!
Something I don’t think was highlighted in yesterday’s excellent array of comments.
Either way, onwards and upwards!
On lead
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/24/flint-michigan-water-crisis-lead-poisoning-families-children
which a US fact sheet that says there is NO safe level for lead
http://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/Lead_FactSheet.html
After being assured by Iceland foods that ‘all necessary steps’ are taken to ensure that their game meat does not contain lead shot, I emailed the Foods Standards Agency to ask whether it was possible to remove all lead shot – I was concerned that Iceland wasn’t being clear. FSA eventually got back to me to say I should direct my query to the local environmental health department. So it seems that FSA is not interested in ensuring retailers give clear and accurate advice to consumers.
Mark, is it possible to tell the difference between cartridges that contain lead and those that contain other substances ie are they a different colour?
Well we have seen the final total for the Ban Driven Grouse Shooting petition produce an increase over the previous one. That in turn showed an increase over its two precursors. Now we are perplexed at the low numbers on the Ban Lead Ammunition petition and are wondering about the next round for DGS.
It has shown us a lot about the low level of informed folk out there, that slowly we are educating more folk on these topics, and that the snowball is rolling and more rallying to the cause. Which surely gives us a clue as to where to next.
We need to sink a lot more into getting the real story out there to the greater British public who are generally supportive of such issues but simply do not know. It is, as has been pointed out by all and sundry, abysmal that the NGO’s are failing to do this.
So, bar getting a PR company like Abzed to do the job, we could do with focussing on informing /educating on a larger scale. Could we fund adverts in the press or even one in the RSPB magazine, do articles for local newspapers! Could we produce flyers with a summary and references for further reading and the relevant petition details so that we can each run off a few copies and when we meet folk on the train or out walking/birding we can give them something to take away so that, having had their ear bent, they don’t just forget about it. The same sort of e flyer could then be used by us all to forward to contacts, many of whom may then in turn forward to others. On top of this we need to tell folk a strategy for signing up to maximise family members and email addresses as this is a limiting factor on the numbers signing up. Surely this sort of approach would enable us to start to hit the big time!
Mike – thank you. Good thoughts. I looked at adverts in newspapers and online and I’m not sure they would be cost-effective, but we did find some cost-effective ways of spreading the word and we can roll those out again, and on a much bigger scale, but only if we (I guess that’s me) raise some funds. It’s on the list of things to do. Thank you.