Good morning! Just one subject today, the ongoing story of lead levels in Waitrose game meat.
We have tested game meat from a variety of outlets over the last couple of years - click here, here, here and here. The issue is that lead is a poison and yet no maximum levels are set for lead levels in game meat - despite the fact that maximum levels are stipulated for other meats (such as beef, pork and chicken) and lead is the commonest ammunition (by far) used to shoot game such as Pheasants, Red Grouse, Red-legged Partridge, Rabbits and more.
We have found, as have others, that lead levels in game meat are high - usually much higher than would be legal for meat that is not killed by having a toxic metal shot into it.
Does this matter? Well, lead ammunition is toxic to wildlife and people. The impacts of lead ammunition on waterfowl populations are well studied and have led to lead ammunition restrictions for waterfowl shooting in many countries. But other predatory and scavenging species can ingest lead too - think of all those Pheasants that are injured and then scavenged. A recent paper demonstrated population level impacts of lead ingestion by European raptors - click here. And remember, the scale of Pheasant shooting is massive in the UK compared with most other countries in Europe.
When it comes to us, the Food Standards Agency warns against eating large quantities of game shot with lead ammunition and advises pregnant women and those trying to become pregnant to avoid eating such meat and that it should not be fed to young children. Ingesting lead can have a variety of physiological impacts on different parts of the body but the emphasis on children is because the central nervous system is susceptible to lead. Decreases in the IQ scores of children are associated with increases in blood lead level. Health authorities consider that there is no safe threshold level of exposure to lead, below which there is no risk of harm.
Our most recent tests of lead levels in Waitrose game meat are reported in more detail on our blog today - click here. We found that Woodpigeon and partridge (species unknown) meat on sale in Waitrose stores had high levels of lead just like their Pheasants do. This is disappointing because Waitrose promised to go 'lead-free' in their game meat and haven't been able to deliver on that promise.
We met Waitrose a few weeks ago and told them about these new results and suggested to them that they needed to do similar testing themselves - after all Wild Justice is a tiny organisation whilst Waitrose is a multi-billion pound outfit - why are we having to tell them about the lead levels in the meat they are offering for sale?
But at heart, this is not a Waitrose failure (although so far they have failed) but a regulatory failure. An expert group, convened by government, recommended the phasing out of lead ammunition in a report in 2015 - click here (although it's not an easy read) - and this government has sat idly by doing nothing on the subject since then. There is now, largely because of parallel action in the EU, a move perhaps to ban lead ammunition some time in the future. That's pathetic.
Wild Justice's testing of lead levels in game meat has been a source of embarassment to the shooting industry and, perhaps, to government too. We will keep on testing lead levels in game meat and we are working collaboratively with others to investigate other aspects of lead in the environment and in our lives.
If you like what we are doing, please consider making a donation through PayPal, bank transfer or a cheque in the post - see details here. Our work is funded solely by donations. Studies such as the one described here cost a few thousand pounds each time: employing someone to travel around supermarkets, the cost of the meat samples, postage and packaging and then laboratory costs of analysis.
Thank you!
Wild Justice (Directors: Mark Avery, Chris Packham and Ruth Tingay).
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