Recently we received an email from a customer and friend of ours asking if we knew whether or not the feed we give our chickens is tested for arsenic. We passed this question along to our feed supplier, Josh Ernst, of Ernst Grain & Livestock in Clear Spring, MD.
No Arsenic
Josh answered, “We have never had a reason to test our feeds for Arsenic.” He wasn’t sure about arsenic in conventionally-raised feeds since he does not raise them conventionally.
So Stephen did a little bit of research:
“It appears that arsenic was used as a drug in industrial chicken feeds from the 1940s to 2014 with FDA approval. It was used for a couple of reasons both “health” and aesthetic. It had purported antibiotic effects for an illness that plagues industrially raised chickens, coccidiosis, and for turkeys, blackhead. It also colors the meat pink which was apparently a desirable trait (made it more like pork, I guess). The primary four drugs were Roxarsone, Carbasone, Arsanilic, and Nitarsone. It appears that in 2014 the FDA finally banned the first three. Permission to use Nitarsone was revoked in 2015, apparently. Note that according to one resource these arsenic compounds become poison when the meat is cooked.
“Basically, thanks to the FDA and chemical farming, the generation fed the most chicken in history–our generation–during its formative and flesh-building years was eating arsenic every time we ate chicken. No wonder our friends and I have all had serious health issues–like the lymphoma I had when I was 26–before we were 40. Here are the sources that I used so far to learn more about this serious threat to our health:
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/how-you-can-avoid-low-level-arsenic-in-rice-and-chicken
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5332189
https://nutritionfacts.org/blog/why-was-chicken-the-primary-source-of-arsenic-exposure-in-children
https://www.food-safety.com/articles/3182-high-arsenic-levels-found-in-us-chicken
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25608233
We source our feeds from Josh Ernst in Clear Spring. Ernst Grain & Livestock is currently operated by the 6th, 7th, and 8th generation on the farm!!!! We know what is in the feed, and the ingredients that make up this feed are ingredients that we are happy to feed to chickens that we are eating! Check out what’s in our chickens’ feed here:
Chick Starter (fed for the first 3 weeks)
Chick Grower (fed from 3 weeks until slaughter)
Chicken Layer (fed to our laying hens).
No GMOs
While the feed is not organic, it is non-GMO and tested to be free from glyphosate residue. According to both our research and our experience, the freshness of the feed is of the utmost importance in the health of the animal being fed. Because of this, we pick up the feed every two weeks–this way it is freshly-milled, which means it has the highest nutrient-density possible. Just like whole-wheat flour, the longer the time between milling and eating, the more the nutritional value degrades (this is also why I fresh mill whole wheat flour in-house when I make sourdough bread).
No Soy
We only purchase the soy-free feed since we know that soy has undesirable amounts of phytoestrogens which effect the hormones of the chicken (and you!). And we agree with the Weston A. Price Foundation that soy is not healthy to consume in the amounts that is found in most American food. As a family, we avoid all forms of soy, unless it is fermented in the traditional way and then we only eat it in condiment amounts.
So you can be assured that the chicken and eggs you get from Good Soil Farm has been fed the highest quality feed! If you want the earliest opportunities to get our chicken and eggs, sign-up for our Mailchimp email list here!
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