Fragments in Meat?

[Robobiss]

If argue that most people that butcher their animals themselves do a much more thorough job of cleaning than a butcher does. We’re doing it to make sure we get the best product possible. They’re doing it to as fast as they can to make as much money as possible.

I too, think is is a huge factor.

Processors make money in volume. They also have happier customers the more packages of meat that they give back to them.

I don’t trust a processor to give me the meat from the animal that I brought them back to me, or to clean the grinder in between critters. I damn sure don’t trust them to go through my stuff with a fine toothed comb like I do.

 

[Esteban]

I feel confident having cut meat professionally for 16 years and having graduate degrees in meat/animal science to state that despite your best trimming efforts lead fragments can and do go undetected during carcass fabrication and further processing. Grinding can comminute particles throughout the entire meat block into microscopic pieces that easily go undetected. As someone alluded to above, lead can have detrimental impacts on human health, especially in susceptible populations like young children and women who are nursing who do not clear it from their tissues as quickly as adolescents and adults.

I believe The Hunt Backcountry podcast had an episode on this a few months back that discussed this in great detail. If I remember correctly, the risk of lead in your system is even greater for those who reload. Folks should give it a listen if they haven't already.

To each their own, and if it was purely ballistics-motivated I'd shoot lead all day and twice on Sunday. But, copper kills just fine and alleviates the concern of lead exposure to my family and me in the meat we eat. YMMV.

When I was completing my degree in wildlife bio, we were taken on a field trip to the state lab to watch part of a necropsy being completed on a grizzly that was poached. It really sunk in for me then seeing the x-ray of all the little lead fragments within that bear just how much a lead bullet can come apart.

Another consideration with lead ammo is that if it's left within the carcass of a big game animal in the field, it will likely end up being consumed by scavengers. Can be pretty bad for birds of prey.

I shoot copper now, but most of the game I've eaten in my life was taken with lead bullets. Also used to bite the lead fishing sinkers to clamp them onto the line and I know I'm not the only one to do so...

 

[HunterGatherer]

Facts -
•If you shoot lead, there is lead in your meat.
•You are not finding the lead when you butcher, no matter how careful you are.
• There is no “safe” level of lead exposure
• Dozens of studies have confirmed serious health consequences of lead exposure at very low levels, including decreased IQ, ADD symptoms, miscarriage, birth defects, the list goes on… do a quick search on “effects of lead exposure “

Why people choose to ignore these facts and continue to shoot lead is an absolute mystery to me.

 

[BTLowry]

Worst case was bit down on a copper jacket in a piece of link sausage

That is when I quit that processor and started purchasing equipment to do my own

I have found fragments in meat before when processing, usually cut out liberally around damaged meat and still look closely for any outside that area.

I figure I eat a lot worse stuff in the food bought at the store than the little bit of lead I may get from deer meat

 

[Ringbill27]

I have, but have no details as it was found in polish sausage I made. The big reason I switched to coppers.

 

[Ringbill27]

Facts -
•If you shoot lead, there is lead in your meat.
•You are not finding the lead when you butcher, no matter how careful you are.
• There is no “safe” level of lead exposure
• Dozens of studies have confirmed serious health consequences of lead exposure at very low levels, including decreased IQ, ADD symptoms, miscarriage, birth defects, the list goes on… do a quick search on “effects of lead exposure “

Why people choose to ignore these facts and continue to shoot lead is an absolute mystery to me.

Change is hard for people.

 

[BR549]

I butcher my own and farm out the grinding.
Have never found lead in meat.
How many of us who use lead or our family members have shown elevated levels on a blood test?

 

[glennjones]

I butcher my own and farm out the grinding.
Have never found lead in meat.
How many of us who use lead or our family members have shown elevated levels on a blood test?

My family has been eating deer shot with coreloks for 40 years because that's all my dad has ever shot. Not one of us has elevated lead levels. Now the ADD symptoms and low IQ came from somewhere but it wasn't the deer meat we ate, or the rabbits, dove, quail, or squirrels. Most likely got it from being born in the south.

 

[Rich M]

Facts -
•If you shoot lead, there is lead in your meat.
•You are not finding the lead when you butcher, no matter how careful you are.
• There is no “safe” level of lead exposure
• Dozens of studies have confirmed serious health consequences of lead exposure at very low levels, including decreased IQ, ADD symptoms, miscarriage, birth defects, the list goes on… do a quick search on “effects of lead exposure “

Why people choose to ignore these facts and continue to shoot lead is an absolute mystery to me.

You can get all that stuff just by taking Tylenol.

I used to get blood tested annually for lead and other nasty stuff for employment, some reason don't have lead poisoning and regularly eat lead-shot deer and game - often use teeth to put split shots on my fishing line. By your reconning, I should be dead. Go figure.

Can you please explain why lead poisoning affects birds more than mammals?

 

[North of 60]

If argue that most people that butcher their animals themselves do a much more thorough job of cleaning than a butcher does. We’re doing it to make sure we get the best product possible. They’re doing it to as fast as they can to make as much money as possible.

100%...

 

[TaperPin]

I’m super curious now - surely more than one box of meat back from the butcher has been x-rayed? I’ll have to ask a veterinarian if they X-ray their personal wild game after processing.

 

[Weldor]

Another positive to bowhunting- grin

Big grin, carbon fibers from broken shafts. We just can't win LOL

 

[HunterGatherer]

You can get all that stuff just by taking Tylenol.

I used to get blood tested annually for lead and other nasty stuff for employment, some reason don't have lead poisoning and regularly eat lead-shot deer and game - often use teeth to put split shots on my fishing line. By your reconning, I should be dead. Go figure.

Can you please explain why lead poisoning affects birds more than mammals?

Lead poisoning is acute and you likely will not get actual lead poisoning unless you eat a lot of lead in a very short time. Instead, You will get a buildup of lead in your system over time, resulting in symptoms that are difficult to attribute to a specific cause, like losing 3-7 IQ points for example.

As to your question about lead affecting birds more than mammals- I haven’t looked up stats but it stands to reason that it’s due to their much smaller volume of blood. 10mcg in an animal with 3oz of blood is a lot higher concentration than 10mcg in an animal with quarts or gallons of blood.

The bottom line is, why would you choose to eat lead when it’s completely unnecessary. Give me one good argument for shooting lead vs copper. Keep in mind, before you start talking about expansion and wound channels, etc that hunters have killed millions of animals over thousands of years with pointy sticks (arrows).

 

[Huntindog45]

When I saw the heading for this post I was certain there would be multiple pages of posts by some of the most brilliant scientific minds. Was not disappointed.

 

[Fireflyfishing]

Ahh, the anti-lead crowd had come out of the woodwork…

I would argue my IQ has dropped from reading these anti-lead posts…

 

[Sccritterkiller]

Never...I have a Garret Carrot on the shelf above my butcher table...gets more use for ducks and turkeys...

 

[HunterGatherer]

Funny how the pro lead guys never have any good points to support their opinions- they just make fun of people who don’t eat lead.

 

[Chris in TN]

Facts -
•If you shoot lead, there is lead in your meat.
•You are not finding the lead when you butcher, no matter how careful you are.
• There is no “safe” level of lead exposure
• Dozens of studies have confirmed serious health consequences of lead exposure at very low levels, including decreased IQ, ADD symptoms, miscarriage, birth defects, the list goes on… do a quick search on “effects of lead exposure “

Why people choose to ignore these facts and continue to shoot lead is an absolute mystery to me.

Your list of facts isn't complete.

So, to answer you....1) as a whole, copper still sucks. Some designs work better than others but in general terms all-copper projectiles still aren't all that great in either BC or terminal performance. Lead-core bullet tech is simply more mature and there's no way around that reality. Also, 2) unfortunately, there's the reality that pushes for copper use are often tied to political stances that go far outside the scope of the health risks involved. Sucks, but it's real.

Also, 3) whether you're getting lead in your meat - and to what extent - depends a great deal on where you're hitting the animal, what you're hitting it with, and the degree to which you trim around the wounds. People constantly tell half-truths to get around this. I absolutely don't suggest that people send a bloodshot shoulder to a processor for grinding. Or make high shoulder shots, or hindquarter shots, or spine shots. Or neck shots. But butchering at home allows a great deal of control over the process and if you're shooting animals in the heart and/or lower lungs, staying out of the shoulders, and trimming heavily, not shooting highly frangible bullets at high speeds at close range, you can mitigate, if not perfectly eliminate, the risks. Bullet fragments are still subject to the laws of physics and smaller fragments aren't penetrating *that* far away from the impact site. Being willing to trim generously and not try to get rib meat or the lower shank of the front leg (neither of which I want, TBH, even if the animal was shot in the head) goes a long way.

Also, 4) it's easy to test for lead levels and when my kids were younger I actually did it (because I used to cast bullets a lot and worried once that they'd broke into my lead stash and played in it) and, apparently they hadn't eaten any, because their levels came back so low that the nurses said 'I told you it was a waste' and sort of low-key chided my wife for even having the tests done. At the time they were eating a lot of game (as we still do) including not only deer shot with rifles but squirrels shot with both .22lr and shotguns. And I've had my own tests over the years (I have health issues that *could have been* caused by heavy metal exposure, but were not) and have always tested very low even after a lifetime of eating game meat, and some of it cared for much more casually back in the day, compared to what we do now.

Next, 5) I have zero control over the big studies showing lead fragments in most game meat. I don't know where or how the shots were made, I don't know how well the animal was trimmed or whether the meat was kept properly separated from other animals or whether the grinders or saws or even knives and work surfaces were cleaned between animals. Therefore I have no real way of correlating those studies to my own game consumption, and 6) I also don't know who funded those studies or what political biases they might have. Then, 7) I don't use saws on my animals. I generally won't even use commercial processors unless the animal was shot through the ribs (no shoulder) and our local processors don't try to salvage rib meat anyway. I can usually avoid a lot of potential by simply not handing a mangled piece of meat to a processor in the first place. Every piece of meat I touch here at home, I am completely aware of where the animal was hit, and with what, and how the bullet behaved, and have complete control over how much trimming I do (and I do a lot when called for - venison isn't particularly hard to come by in this part of the world).

Funny how the pro lead guys never have any good points to support their opinions- they just make fun of people who don’t eat lead.

I'm not making fun of anyone here. I do think I've demonstrated that your statements are inaccurate or incomplete, though. You should at least acknowledge that there's more to the issue than the short list of 'facts' you threw down earlier as if they were some sort of trump card.

 

[Fireflyfishing]

Funny how the pro lead guys never have any good points to support their opinions- they just make fun of people who don’t eat lead.

Lifelong hunter using lead projectiles and fishing with lead weights. Never sick from lead. Know plenty of others in the same boat. In fact, I’ve never met anyone with lead illness related issues…in my life.

How’s that, does that qualify?

 

[Q_Sertorius]

Facts -
•If you shoot lead, there is lead in your meat.
•You are not finding the lead when you butcher, no matter how careful you are.
• There is no “safe” level of lead exposure
• Dozens of studies have confirmed serious health consequences of lead exposure at very low levels, including decreased IQ, ADD symptoms, miscarriage, birth defects, the list goes on… do a quick search on “effects of lead exposure “

Why people choose to ignore these facts and continue to shoot lead is an absolute mystery to me.

This isn’t true. Even in people who eat nothing but wild game, lead levels are not elevated above the baseline. The thing that elevates lead levels is cleaning firearms.