Hormones

Cows raised for milk and flesh are injected with powerful hormones to make them grow larger and produce more milk than they ever would naturally. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, by 1999, roughly 99 percent of cows on large feedlots in the U.S. were given synthetic hormonal implants.⁵⁸ These hormones, some of which are used illegally by athletes, are prohibited for over-the-counter use by humans in the United States, but the FDA refuses to adequately regulate their use to promote growth in cows, meaning that when you eat meat and drink milk, you are consuming unsafe drugs that weren’t prescribed to you.⁵⁹ Consuming extra hormones disturbs the natural hormonal balance in the body, and eating animal products laced with hormones can have serious consequences for both children and adults.

Kids’ bodies are small and still developing, so exposure to even tiny amounts of the hormones in animal products on a regular basis can have a large impact. According to a report on hormones in meat and milk that appeared in The Los Angeles Times, “The amount of estradiol in two hamburgers eaten in one day by an 8-year-old boy could increase his total hormone levels by as much as 10 percent, based on conservative assumptions, because young children have very low natural hormone levels.”⁶⁰ The Cancer Prevention Coalition warns parents that even small amounts of animal products contain enough hormonal residues to harm children, saying, “No dietary levels of hormones are safe, and a dime-sized piece of meat contains billions … of [hormone] molecules.”⁶¹

When kids eat the flesh of cows who were treated with hormones, the spike in hormone levels can disrupt the development of their brain and sex organs. According to a report by the European Union on the effects of hormone-laced animal products, “Certain organs are more susceptible to the effects of oestrogens, androgens, and anti-androgens [all hormones used in cows raised for food] during development than during adulthood. These organs include the brain, and the … primary and secondary sex organs.”⁶²

The negative consequences of feeding children meat were clearly demonstrated in Puerto Rico in the early 1980s, when thousands of children experienced premature sexual development and painful ovarian cysts; the culprit was meat from cattle who had been treated with growth-promoting sex hormones.⁶³ The hormones in meat-based diets are also blamed for the early sexual development of young girls in the Western world—nearly half of all African-American girls and 15 percent of their white peers now enter puberty at the age of 8.⁶⁴

Raising the amount of estrogen and other hormones in our bodies through the consumption of meat and milk can cause other disorders, including gynecomastia, or enlarged male breasts. In one school in Italy, nearly one in three boys aged 3 to 5 and more than half of boys aged 6 to 10 were found to have enlarged breasts, and the hormones in meat were suspected to have caused the disorder.⁶⁵

It’s no surprise that meat and milk laced with sex hormones are especially harmful to kids, but the farmed-animal industry continues to dose animals with these drugs in spite of the well-documented health risks.

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