Steroids on the Farm. Chromatography Looks into the Manure

Non-therapeutic drug use in cattle is a controversial and emotive topic that causes divisions between continents. The topic encompasses many different aspects including food safety, consumers’ rights and food labelling.

Recent studies in the United States have highlighted an often forgotten aspect in all of the controversy about the food we eat — the environment. Let’s take a brief look at steroid use in cattle and see how chromatography has helped study steroids down on the farm.

Steroid steaks

Cattle are big business and like any business the aim is to make a profit. That means turning a calf into a fully grown adult and selling the animal for its meat. If the process can be accelerated and the yield increased then the profit is higher — enter steroids.

Steroids are naturally found in cattle — as they are in humans — and both natural and synthetic steroids are administered to cattle to promote growth.

Some of the steroids used promote growth directly — testosterone and its derivatives. Other steroids suppress the cow’s reproductive cycle — progestin — freeing up a cow’s reproductive resources to fuel meat development.

What’s the problem?

The European Union banned the use of growth promoters in cattle in the 1980s — and this includes the importation of meat from animals that have been administered growth promoters — much to the annoyance of the industry in Europe and the USA. The ban was brought in partly because of consumer concerns over the effects steroids in the meat might have on humans.

Meat from animals treated with non-therapeutic steroids has a higher concentration of steroids and steroid metabolites compared with meat from control animals. The US Food and Drug Administration approves the use of non-therapeutic steroids for growth; but other research suggests that digestion of steroids from meat can affect humans — including the foetus during development.

But even if the meat is safe to eat — might there be other impacts of the steroid use?

Dust, manure and runoff

Studies have looked at the impact of steroids released into environment — and at the possible routes into the environment of the steroids used on cattle. Articles published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology considered the manure and runoff from the feedlots of cattle, and also the possible spread of steroids due to the dust blown from feedlots.

Using liquid chromatography in conjunction with mass spectrometry, steroid levels were measured in the samples taken from the environment surrounding cattle farms. The teams reported that runoff and dust dispersed steroids and their metabolites into the environment at a level higher than that found in control groups — which could be a possible public health concern.

For more information regarding the testing for animal drugs in the food chain take a look at the article, Veterinary Drug Residues in our Food Chain from Chromatography Today.

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