 In 1979, an epidemic of breast enlargement was noted in Italian children. Poultry or veal was suspected, given that estrogens may be fed to farm animals to accelerate their weight gain. After this episode, Europe banned the use of anabolic growth promoters in agriculture and has banned the importation of American meat from animals injected with drugs like zirinol, sold as ralgro magnum. Zirinol is one of the most potent known endocrine disruptors. 100,000 times more estrogenic than the plastics chemical BPA, for example. And zirinol constitutes a special case among potential endocrine disruptors, because in contracts to all other estrogenic endocrine disrupting chemicals, zirinol is present in human food because it's deliberately used, in fact designed to be a potent, persistent estrogen, whereas the estrogenic properties of the other chemicals is accidental. And if you drip blood from a cow that's been implanted with the drug on human breast cancer cells in a petri dish, you can double the cancer growth rate. We don't drink blood, though, but preliminary data also showed that muscle extracts, meat extracts, also stimulated breast cancer cell proliferation. Furthermore, zirinol may cause the transformation of normal breast cells into cancer cells in the first place. Zirinol containing blood from implanted cattle was capable of transforming normal human breast cells into breast cancer cells within 21 days. Obese women may be at greater risk of developing zirinol-induced breast cancer, since they already have high levels of leptin, a hormone produced by fat cells, that in itself promote breast cancer growth, and zirinol exposure can greatly enhance this growth-promoting action. This result also suggests that zirinol may be more harmful to obese breast cancer patients than to normal-weight breast cancer patients in terms of breast cancer development. In conclusion, because these anabolic growth promoters in meat production are by far the most potent hormones found in human food, we should really be testing people, especially children, before and after eating this meat. It amazes me that it hasn't been done until it has. We have no idea what kind of threat they may pose, though the fact that zirinol is as potent as estradiol, the primary sex steroid in women, and DES should concern us. DES is another synthetic estrogen marketed to pregnant women, all pregnant women, until 1971, when it was shown to cause vaginal cancers in the daughters. But few know who's also used in meat. In the absence of effective federal regulation, the meat industry uses hundreds of animal feed-add, that's with little or no concern about the carcinogenic and other toxic effects of dietary residues of these additives. Illustratively, after decades of misleading assurances of the safety of DES and its use as a growth-promoting animal feed-additives, the United States finally banned its use some 40 years after it was first shown to be carcinogenic. The meat industry then promptly switched to other potentially carcinogenic additives such as zirinol. When girls started dying from vaginal cancer, DES treated meat was subsequently banned in Europe. However, misleading insurances, including the deliberate suppression of residue data, managed to delay a US ban on DES and the meat supply for eight years. Today, virtually the entire US population consumes without any warning, labeling, or information unknown in unpredictable amounts of hormone residues in meat products over a lifetime. If all hormonal and other carcinogenic feed-additives aren't banned immediately, the least we could have is explicit labeling requirements of the use and hormone residue levels in all meat products, including milk and eggs.