Medroxyprogesterone in Food Chain Raises Consternation in Europe

Medroxyprogesterone is used as HRT here in the US. However, in Europe it is showing up in the feed supply in certain areas of the Netherlands and Europe is extremely concerned. What I can’t figure out is why, if this is supposedly safe for use as a hormone replacement, has Europe banned it use in life-stock and why are they so scared now that it’s shown up in the food supply for animals? Vaguely reminiscent of “flouridation” in the US, huh???…

Jul 17 – France said on Wednesday it had imported hundreds of animals, up to 200 tonnes of feed and five tonnes of meat potentially tainted with a banned growth hormone which is at the centre of a food scare spreading across Europe. Contaminated feed and animals have turned up in most of the European Union’s 15 nations since the hormone medroxyprogesterone-acetate (MPA) was discovered last month in foodstuffs at three farms in the Netherlands. The French farm ministry said 200 pigs from a suspect Dutch farm were imported to the Ain region of eastern France in July and 3.7 tonnes of ham made from them were then shipped to Italy. An additional five tonnes of suspect ham had been imported from Belgium to two companies in the Ain region and the western Ille-et-Vilaine region in Brittany, the ministry said, although it added there was no evidence the meat was tainted. “We have no proof that there has been a contamination in France, these are just products that are potentially tainted because they come from suspect farms,” a spokesman said. MPA is banned in the European Union and in other countries as a growth hormone in livestock feed. It is, however, a component in some pharmaceuticals, such as hormone replacement therapies and contraceptives. The source of the contamination has been traced to waste water from an Irish pharmaceutical factory owned by U.S. drugmaker Wyeth, Irish officials said last week. The waste was shipped to a now-bankrupt Belgian reprocessing plant, Bioland, which in turn provided glucose syrup as raw materials to Belgian soft drink makers and Dutch feed producers. The Netherlands, Germany and Belgium have been hardest hit so far by the scare over MPA. In the Netherlands, the world’s third biggest pork exporting nation, officials have found that 73 feed makers who had received tainted raw materials have delivered feed to around half of all pig producers, or around 7,000 farms. In Brussels, EU veterinary experts met on Tuesday to review the MPA contamination, a day after officials said 11 EU countries had been touched by the problem, and they stressed the need for joint action to protect public health.

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