Hormones & Chickens

After cranberries, caponettes. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Arthur S. Flemming took aim last week at the plump, premium-priced table fowl, gave them both barrels, and shot down the nation's entire supply. Behind his action lay some farfetched reasoning that the chemical used to caponize young chickens and make them into capettes or caponettes might conceivably induce cancer in the consumer.

The facts: diethylstilbestrol (stilbestrol for short) is a synthetic of the same chemical family as the female sex hormones (estrogens). Physicians prescribe it for some women whose systems need more estrogens, for some men with prostatic cancer. Back in 1947, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration authorized poultry farmers to use stilbestrol as a chemical castrater for cockerels, by implanting 15 mg. at the base of the skull (so that any residue at killing time would be thrown away with the head). Thus artificially caponized, the fowl gain weight faster than surgically castrated birds. Caponettes made up about 1% of the U.S. poultry output, were sold mainly in the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas.

It took until 1957 for the FDA to figure out by increasingly sensitive tests, that there is a minute residue of stilbestrol in other parts of caponettes than the head --20 to 30 parts per billion in the liver and 35 to 100 in the skin fat.

An average caponette weighs 2,500 gm. (about 5 1/2 Ibs.). So, by the FDA's top-hazard figures, a roast-caponette fancier would get only a minute fraction of a milligram of stilbestrol if he ate all the skin fat and liver. Medical doses of stilbestrol for human patients cover a wide range beginning at .1 mg. daily, but often run to 15 mg. daily, and may go as high as 125 mg.

Said the National Cancer Institute's Dr. Roy Hertz: "In very rare instances, cancers have arisen in patients after very prolonged use of stilbestrol, and some physicians have been led to conclude that stilbestrol was a causative factor in these cases."

On the strength of this tenuous evidence. Secretary Flemming decided to ban the use of stilbestrol in fattening fowl. (It will still be permitted in fattening cattle and sheep, because even FDA supersleuths have not been able to find any residue in these meats, provided that growers stop feeding the substance to the animals at least 48 hours before slaughtering.) Manufacturers agreed to stop selling stilbestrol to caponette raisers, and the farmers agreed to stop using stuff they will no ' longer be able to get. The Department of Agriculture was stuck with the job of buying up $10 million worth of caponettes already on the market.

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