News Update

News Update
March 28, 2007

Study Claims Beef Lowers Sperm Count

Researchers at the Rochester Medical Center in New York have released a report indicating that pregnant women who eat a lot of U.S. beef give birth to sons with lower sperm counts.

According to Reuters, researchers found that men whose mothers ate high levels of beef during pregnancy had 24.3% lower sperm counts. The report, which was published in the journal Human Reproduction, stated the reduced sperm count could be due to growth-promoting hormones, pesticides or other environmental contaminants.

The team of researchers collected data on the partners of 387 pregnant women in five U.S. cities between 2000 and 2005, as well as on the mothers of the fathers-to-be. Of the 51 men whose mothers recall eating the most beef, 18% had sperm counts classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as sub-fertile, Reuters reports.

As the study began to make national news today, the American Meat Institute (AMI) released a statement calling the report “a health study in search of a health problem.”

Randy Huffman, AMI Foundation vice president of scientific affairs, said the study contained several methodological problems.

“It is a widely accepted that food recall can be notoriously poor from even a day or a week before, let alone multiple decades. Asking a woman of advanced age to recall with any degree of accuracy her beef consumption patterns 20, 30 or 40 years ago is absolutely absurd,” Huffman said. “Furthermore, professional interviewers were not used in this study. Instead, the male study subjects were asked to interview their own mothers. The study authors even admit the mothers food recall is ‘undoubtedly subject to error.’”

Huffman said the most glaring error in the study is the “purely speculative conclusion that certain chemical components of beef were the cause of associations observed between the questionnaire responses and the count of sperm in the male subjects.”

The study does not include any laboratory analysis of the compounds suggested to be contained in beef, much less the beef that may have been consumed, AMI noted.

“Finally, it is noteworthy that the 387 men in this study all successfully conceived a child without medical assistance,” Huffman said.

To read AMI’s complete statement, go to http://www.meatami.com/storylinks/2007/newbeefstudyandsperm.pdf

President Bush Highlights Importance of Beef Trade at NCBA Spring Conference

President Bush told cattle producers today that Congress needs to pass a number of pending trade deals and reauthorize Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) so America’s food producers and agriculture sector can better compete in a growing global marketplace.

“Every time we break down a barrier to trade, someone who’s raising a cow will have an opportunity to sell that cow into a better market,” President Bush said during the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association’s (NCBA’s) Annual Spring Legislative Conference. “My attitude on trade is ‘you treat us the way we treat you — and then let’s compete.’”

According to NCBA, the President’s trade agenda was top of mind in his remarks today. The Peru, Panama, and Colombia Free Trade Agreements, widely viewed as the best ever negotiated on behalf of U.S. agriculture, still need to be approved by Congress. And the fate of the U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement, the biggest bilateral trade agreement since NAFTA, hangs in the balance as negotiators conclude discussions this week in Seoul. The Korean deal must be completed by March 31 to give Congress a mandatory 90-day time period for review before TPA expires on June 30, unless renewed by Congress.