Blue Collar Scientist

Update: I have some moose in the freezer - meat which came from hunting the animal, just in case anyone is under the impression there are moose ranches in Alaska - and I’ve made arrangements to have some of the cuts medically imaged in search of lead fragments sometime in the next week! Stay tuned for results! Post follows:

But what else is new, eh?

This time, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (whose website is down as I write, returning 0-length html documents), an industry group representing firearms manufacturers and ammunition makers, has issued a press release that savages scientific results as being cruel and unscientific. The release, with a little additional reporting from AP writer James McPherson, is getting wide play today.

The story starts last year, when Dr. William Cornatzer of Bismark, North Dakota took 100 one-pound packages of venison that had been donated to food pantries, and imaged them in a CAT scanner. The CAT scan showed that more than 60 of the samples had been contaminated with high levels of lead from the bullets used to kill the animals. Every package had some level of contamination.

Cornatzer is a dermatologist and professor at the University of North Dakota medical school in Grand Forks.

The North Dakota Health Department followed up with its own tests, which confirmed Dr. Cornatzer’s results. Minnesota and Iowa evaluated the results, with some media reporting they also conducted their own tests. As a result, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa have alerted food pantries in the state to the contamination and suggested they not distribute the meat.

Lead poisoning results in reduced cognitive abilities, nausea, abdominal pain, irritability, insomnia, headache, seizure, coma, and death. It can also result in constipation, vomiting, weight loss, anemia, kidney damage, learning disability in children, and reproductive damage and infertility.

Dr. William Cornatzer explains how the contamination occurs:

“When [a bullet] hits the deer, it sends little bits of schrapnel-type lead that are almost liquid at that point because of the speed the bullet is going,” explains Cornatzer.

The impact is enough to scatter the deadly toxin throughout the entire animal. Luckily, not all bullets are the same. Dr. Cornatzer says you should avoid bullets that have lead in them that fragment when they hit deer. Instead, you should choose something that`s lead free that mushrooms.

Cornatzer’s tests were spurred by previous scientific results showing that California condors were getting lead poisoned by eating animals killed and abandoned by hunters:

Cornatzer said he became concerned after hearing about possible lead fragments through his membership in the Peregrine Fund of Boise, Idaho, a group that promotes the conservation of birds of prey, including peregrine falcons and California condors.

The organization says lead from bullets in the carcasses of animals is primarily responsible for lead poisoning that has endangered the condors.

A lead bullet shot from a high-powered rifle “fragments into hundreds of tiny pieces,” said Rick Watson, vice president and director of international programs for the Peregrine Fund. “Usually a hunter cuts away damaged meat, but the lead sprays through a large part of the animal,” he said.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation has apparently coordinated multiple statements from the same talking points attacking the discovery that lead from bullets results in widespread contamination of venison:

“It’s alarmist and not supported by any science,” said Lawrence Keane, a vice president and lawyer for the Newton, Conn.-based National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearms and ammunition industry. “High quality protein is now taken out of the mouths of needy, hungry people.”

Not supported by any science? So a doctor using a CAT scanner and a health department using materials assays are doing something unscientific? Only in his dreams.

Says Doug Burdin, a lawyer for the Tucson, Ariz. group Safari Club International:

“This is disheartening, and we certainly don’t think this program should come to an end on the unscientific assessment that has occurred here.”

Does Doug think that dowsing rods were used to find the lead?

And what is with the lawyers passing judgement on scientific results? I’ll grant that not all lawyers are scientifically ignorant. But these two seem to be.

Jason Foss, president of Pheasants for the Future (and of unknown lawyer status), says:

“Sportsmen have been shooting deer for hundreds of years with lead bullets with no problems.”

Poor Jason apparently has no idea that it has only been a few decades that hunters have been using high-powered ammunition with fragmenting lead bullets. As muzzle-loaders know, balls do not fragment on impact; neither do a number of bullet types designed to mushroom rather than fragment.

This is just another sad example of ignorant people lining up to attack science without seeing the opportunities that scientific results present. Hunters and their families will enjoy improved health if they respect the dangers of lead poisoning. Guidelines about the amounts and frequency of consumption of hunted meat could protect non-hunters. And manufacturers of premium, non-fragmenting ammunition have certainly not been well-served by their industry organization, which has essentially just taken a crap all over their business. NSSF had a tremendous opportunity to look like the good guys, if only they had chosen to respond opportunistically to the news; but instead they seem to take a stand against medicine, CAT scanners, and good public health. And in favor of lead in food.