Third, the doses are low. The science indicates that use of supplemental hormones in cattle has only a miniscule impact on hormone levels in beef – well below the natural hormone levels in beef or the amounts produced naturally in our own bodies. According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), a person would need to eat over 13 pounds of beef from an implanted steer to equal the amount of estradiol naturally found in a single egg!1 One glass of milk contains about nine times as much estradiol as a half-pound of beef from an implanted steer. And remember, it’s not just animal products that contain hormonally active chemicals. A half-pound potato has 245 nanograms (ng, or 1 billionth of a gram) of estrogen equivalent, compared with 1.3 ng for a quarter pound of untreated beef and 1.9 ng for beef from an implanted steer.2
The whole world’s health experts say beef hormones are safe, not just those in the United States and Canada. So do the World Health Organization (WHO) and other European scientific bodies. The Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives of the World Health Organization and United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (WHO/FAO Expert Committee) calculated that even assuming the highest residue levels found in beef, a person consuming one pound (~500 g) of beef from an implanted steer would ingest only 50 ng of additional estradiol compared to non-implanted beef.3 That’s less than one-thirtieth of the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) of estradiol for a 75 pound child established by the WHO/FAO Expert Committee.
