Minnesota's venison donation program expected to resume this fall
Thursday, 17 July 2008
by T.W. Budig
ECM Capitol reporter

Minnesota’s venison donation program that officials temporarily froze after lead bullet fragments were discovered in some of the meat is expected to resume this fall.

“We’re looking to go ahead with it in the coming year,†said Minnesota Department of Agriculture Communications Director Michael Schommer.

One ammunition industry spokesman questions whether the venison program should have been shutdown at all.

Rick Patterson, Managing Director of the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturer Institute (SAAMI), argued the state’s action and the suspension of donation programs in other states has been unjustified.

“It takes food out of the mouths of the homeless and the needy,†said Patterson.

“And frankly that is troubling that it happened without good cause,†he said.

The metallic qualities of lead, the lack of scientific evidence showing harm, made the suspensions unwarranted, opined Patterson.

He draws a distinctions between lead in paint or gasoline — harmful stuff, he asserted — and the lead found in ammunition.

“Metallic lead is inert,†he said of the lead tipping most bullets.

“Metallic lead in and of itself doesn’t do anything,†Patterson argued.

Acid is the primary agent that breaks down lead, he argued.

Mammals — humans — have a less acidic digestive systems than waterfowl, for example, he argued.

And the digestive system in mammals works more speedily — ingested material quickly pass through, he maintains.

Asked if the Institute believes that the lead used in bullets poses no health risks to humans, Patterson replied, “That’s correct.â€

No scientific study has ever linked elevated blood lead levels in humans to wild game consumption, he argued.

“Lead levels in the American public has been studied extensively for decades,†said Patterson.

“And there is nothing showing that there’s any sort of effect on people who eat venison,†he said.

Lead is the perfect material for bullets, explained Patterson.

“No other materials, save gold, has the same properties,†he said.

Finding a suitable material to replace lead in ammunition is difficult, Patterson opined.

“To do what a bullet needs to do is a very complex set of criteria,†he said.

Ballistics research has been going on for decades and the ideal substitute hasn’t yet been found, said Patterson.

“They (manufacturers) don’t have it,†he said.

There are just so many metals found on the Periodic Table of the Elements, noted Patterson.

“We know what lead does and potentially can do,†he said.

“We know how to manage it,†he said.

SAAMI is an association of ammunition and firearm manufactures — Federal Cartridge Company, which has a factory in Anoka, is a member — created at the request of Congress in 1926, according to the Institute.

It has some 24 voting members and member companies include Browning, Olin/Winchester, Smith & Wesson, and others.

Erik Zabel, a doctorate holder with the Minnesota Department of Health, views the risks posed by lead differently than Patterson.

“Certainly what we have seen is that lead that’s in the solid, elemental form — and that’s basically what we’re talking about bullets — we have seen certainly cases where children have swallowed fishing sinkers or even lead shot and we have seen that their blood lead level can rise,†he said.

“It can actually rise very substantially in a pretty short time,†said Zabel.

The human stomach contains strong acids, he said.

Ingested lead begins to dissolve.

“And so by that process in effect it turns it into a similar form (of lead) that’s found in paint, which is basically a lead salt,†he said.

“So I think the statement that lead found in bullets is ‘inert’ is not really true,†he said.

Scientific evidence does exists suggesting diet can impact human blood lead levels, Zabel said.

“But it’s kind of basically true that there are no studies that look at what any single people eat and figured out whether that causes it,†he said.

The Center for Disease Control is currently conducting a study in North Dakota looking at the question of diet and lead blood levels.

Pinpointing cause and effect is difficult, Zabel noted, because humans can come in contact with lead at work — sportsmen by loading their own shells.

“But I guess one thing we do know is if you take in lead, some of that will be absorbed,†said Zabel.

Lead affects the central nervous system and children and pregnant women are deemed the most at risk.

There has never been a case of health officials in Minnesota finding elevated lead levels in human traceable to the consumption of wild game, Zabel previously noted.

Patterson said the Institute intends to closely examine the North Dakota study once published.

Special new guidelines concerning the state’s venison donation program are expected to be drawn up in the near future.

Hey Skinner, I saw a short note in the latest NRA American Hunter that the CDC in Atlanta is going to do a study on the issue. Even going to Test some people who only eat vegetables for a comparison.

quote:

Hey Skinner, I saw a short note in the latest NRA American Hunter that the CDC in Atlanta is going to do a study on the issue.

Hey HotCore, I posted that information over 2 months ago.

CDC Study On Lead Exposure To Begin In ND

HotCore, here's another item of interest. You can read about it now or wait for the blurb in the NRA mag in a few months.

Minnesota DNR shooting for safer venison



To help hunters avoid lead-tainted meat, the DNR is testing different types of bullets to see which tend to fragment.

By DOUG SMITH, Star Tribune
July 23, 2008

Lou Cornicelli used a .308-caliber rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and a .50-caliber muzzleloader.

Lou Cornicelli peered intently through the scope of his rifle, then squeezed the trigger.

The shot exploded with a crack, slamming into a most unusual target: A sheep carcass suspended by straps in a field about 160 feet away.

Several workers removed the carcass and replaced it with another, which Cornicelli also shot.

In all, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources big game manager fired several different types of bullets from different guns into 35 sheep Tuesday at Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area near Forest Lake. They were among 75 killed sheep used in a first-of-its-kind study to examine the fragmentation of lead bullets.

The sheep were stand-ins for whitetail deer, and the test results are meant to give Minnesota's 500,000 deer hunters guidance this fall about which ammo poses the least risk of lead contamination.

"The goal is to simply give hunters some recommendations on bullet selection,'' Cornicelli said.

Other states, too, are eagerly awaiting the results, he said.

The sheep will be X-rayed and tested for lead at the University of Minnesota's Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in St. Paul. Some also will be given CT scans, which will provide a three-dimensional image.

The study was prompted by the discovery this spring of lead fragments in venison donated to food shelves in North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Twenty-two percent of the 1,239 samples tested in Minnesota had lead fragments. Distribution was suspended, some venison was discarded and the venison-donation programs were thrown into turmoil.

That Minnesota's deer hunters and their families and thousands of food shelf users might be consuming even small amounts of lead, a toxin, has become a major concern.

Different bullets react differently after hitting an animal, as these two bullets, recovered after being shot into sheep, show.

This article is a bit more detailed,

Ready, aim, research
They were shooting dead sheep, but with good reason. The DNR is studying which bullet types leaves the most and least amount of lead fragments in venison.
Chris Niskanen

07/22/2008
Pioneer Press
FOREST LAKE, Minn.

Here's one wildlife research project you won't find inside the slick, glossy pages of National Geographic.

For the sake of public health, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources researchers spent a warm summer day Tuesday shooting bullets into dead sheep. For this project, there were no dancing butterflies to observe or pretty sunrises to record — it was hard-core, if not grim, scientific data collection involving the firing of rifles at sheep carcasses while merciless horseflies buzzed researchers' heads.

"Real romantic, huh," said Lou Cornicelli, the DNR's big-game program coordinator who manned the guns.

To be sure, just about every Midwest wildlife manager or public health expert wants to know the results of Minnesota's sheep-and-bullet research.

The DNR study is the first of its kind to look at the fragmenting behavior of different bullet types when they burst through an animal. Lead-bullet fragments in venison are a hot topic in the Midwest after several states last spring found small bullet particles in state-funded venison donated to food shelves. The fragments ranged from lead dust to BB size.

Since there isn't a supply of fresh deer carcasses available in midsummer, the DNR is using sheep for the study. The animals were destined for the dog-food plant. In body shape, they are relatively similar to a white-tailed deer, researchers said.

DNR officials invited the media Tuesday to watch the last day of the

three-day shoot, not wanting to attract any attention ahead of time from animal-rights groups (despite the fact the sheep were dead and destined for the slaughterhouse).

The morning was punctuated by loud gunfire, the smell of stale wool and the inevitable sheep jokes as DNR workers dutifully unloaded and reloaded the animals into trucks at the firing range.

For the DNR, it is serious research, costing taxpayers and license-buying hunters about $35,000. The end result: the knowledge of which bullets leave the least number fragments in venison.

Officials don't know if people get sick from eating venison with lead fragments, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a study in May looking at blood-lead levels of North Dakotans who eat venison. Public health experts have raised the alarm because lead is toxic to humans, particularly to children younger than 6 and pregnant women.

For the first time, this year's annual Minnesota Hunting and Trapping Regulations book contains several pages of information and advice on venison consumption and lead bullets. Minnesotans bought 570,000 firearms deer licenses last year and killed more than 210,000 deer with a rifle or shotgun. Another 12,000 deer were killed with muzzle-loading rifles. Nearly all use some type of lead bullet or slug.

"This study isn't designed to ban any type of bullets but to raise awareness about the issue," said Marrett Grund, the lead researcher for the DNR's bullet study. Grund, who has a doctorate in wildlife ecology and is a deer hunter, said he was surprised to learn about lead fragments in venison. "It never dawned on me," he said.

The 75 sheep in the study were purchased for $50 each from a livestock broker in southeast Minnesota. The old ewes were killed each morning before the research project began. They were packed in dry ice and trucked to Forest Lake, where a makeshift shooting range was set up on DNR property. (Eight deer taken from a recent hunt to stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis in northwest Minnesota are also being tested.)

The researchers fired rifle, shotgun and muzzleloader bullets into the sheep carcasses from nearly 55 yards. Numerous types of ammunition were tested, though researchers are most interested in lead rifle bullets, which appear to be the most significant source of lead fragments in venison.

Some bullet types such as "rapid expansion" lead bullets are designed to break apart quickly and kill a deer as fast as possible, Cornicelli said. Others that have "controlled expansion" or are made of harder copper stay relatively intact. In all, five rifle bullet types were being tested, Cornicelli said.

Immediately after getting shot, the sheep were taken to the University of Minnesota's Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory on the St. Paul campus. There, the carcasses were X-rayed and put through a CT, or CAT, scan to get a three-dimensional look at each bullet's path through the animal and to look for lead fragments.

"So far, we've shot 20 animals with the rapid-expansion bullets that are designed to blow up inside the animal,'' Grund said. "It was clear from the X-rays, you could see fragments all over inside the animal from those bullets."

With these types of bullets, "you're maximizing your chances of being exposed to lead,'' Grund said.

By this fall, the DNR hopes to be able to tell hunters which types of bullets leave the least amount of lead in venison. There are no plans for regulating bullets, Grund said, "just providing information to hunters."

The study will be reviewed by other scientists and published in scientific journals.

quote:

Originally posted by Skinner.:
....The old ewes were killed each morning before the research project began. They were packed in dry ice and trucked to Forest Lake, where a makeshift shooting range was set up on DNR property. (Eight deer taken from a recent hunt to stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis in northwest Minnesota are also being tested.)...

Hey Skinner, The note I mentioned is in the Aug08 issue.

I've never personally hunted " FROZEN " Sheep, Deer, Bears, Hogs, Squirrels, Rabbits, Ducks, Geese anyplace except in the old Freezer. Never did shoot them in the Freezer, because they were already processed and quite dead.

I feel sure the above study you found will be very useful to me " IF " I ever decide to hunt " FROZEN " game with a firearm though.

May I just explain the whole thing.....

Lead is a known killer to humans.....children may die or suffer severe brain disorder from lead poisoning like from lead in paints.....this lead is colloidal and is easily passed to the blood stream.

Metallic lead passes through the body harmlessly.....there's enough lead in a #5 shotgun BB to kill several flks if it's converted to clloidal.....but once ingested it passes through the body harmlessly.

Ducks on the other hand have a gizzard.....it has nothing to do with acidity!!!!! and the gizzard has stones and the stones grind the food for digestion. In the process, if the duck picked up a lead BB, the BB can be ground so fine as to alow the lead particles to enter the blood stream and this causes severe poisoning.

Leave it to the folks in Minnesota to spend the taxpayers money to re-discover the wheel.....

quote:

The note I mentioned is in the Aug08 issue.

So the news is 4 months old by the time most will read it. You should be hearing about the MN DNR study posted above in November then .

quote:

I've never personally hunted " FROZEN " Sheep,

So where did the article say the sheep were frozen ? Only packed in dry ice.

"The old ewes were killed each morning before the research project began. They were packed in dry ice and trucked to Forest Lake, where a makeshift shooting range was set up on DNR property."

Looks like a reading comprehension problem.

quote:

Originally posted by Skinner.:
[QUOTE]

So where did the article say the sheep were frozen ? Only packed in dry ice.

"The old ewes were killed each morning before the research project began. They were packed in dry ice and trucked to Forest Lake, where a makeshift shooting range was set up on DNR property."

Looks like a reading comprehension problem.

It doesn't take dry ice long to freeze meat. I was wondering if they let them thaw out first.

Rad

Metallic lead is toxic. That is a simple fact known to science for centuries. Lead is not inert. It will not pass harmlessly through your body. As it goes through your body will absorb some amount and it will affect you. It is not a question of if, but only how much. Patterson should be slapped senseless for making statements like that.

You can absorb lead through your skin, it does not have to be ingested, although ingestion will cause you absorb more faster.

Ignorant claims to the contrary are no less irresponsible and dangerous than publishing known overmax loads that can hurt someone.

If everyone would just donate all of their hunting firearms to Iran and take up archery equipment (and be a REAL hunter ), there would be zero worry about lead in meat.

quote:

Originally posted by Skinner.:
...So where did the article say the sheep were frozen ? Only packed in dry ice.

Hey Skinner, What do you think happens to meat when it is packed in Dry Ice and then trucked around for hours?

Looks like "another" complete lack of first-hand knowlede to me.

quote:

"The old ewes were killed each morning before the research project began. They were packed in dry ice and trucked to Forest Lake, where a makeshift shooting range was set up on DNR property."...

Why not just shoot the "live" sheep?

I can see where that concept would be confusing to someone who thinks all of us Hunters are dying from eating Lead. Perhaps they think it is more "humane" to shoot dead critters. Sounds like input from the old Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, "We need Safer Bullets!", fan club.

This entire fiasco gets dumber and dumber the more you find out about it. Pitiful!

quote:

Looks like "another" complete lack of first-hand knowlede to me.

That's exactly what I think of your comments, how long do you think it takes to freeze a fresh killed whole carcass with dry ice ?

I've hauled too many carcasses in totes with dry ice and frozen too many albacore to believe you have any knowledge of this.

quote:

This entire fiasco gets dumber and dumber the more you find out about it. Pitiful!

And you're welcome to believe that, but your beliefs are irrelevant to the issue of lead fragments in venison.

Care to explain how the donation programs can continue if a percentage of the frozen, packaged venison contains lead fragments ? Particularly with Federal and state laws prohibiting the distribution of such products.

Skinner,

The sheep probably came from Dodge Center area and that's two hours down the road from Forest Lake where I live. It'd be near impossible to freeze a "wool on" sheep no matter what you did in that time.

I don't see how the Health Department is going to be able to do anything but shut it down again based on the look of the empty jackets shown in the photos if they came out of this series of tests. The allowable limits for lead in food or drink is in the tiny parts per million. They can control the bullets that the control hunters use in their guns, but for general deer hunting they will have to either ban lead completely or have an ironclad affidavit that they were killed with non-lead bullets before they accept a donated general season kill.

To get down to below safe maximum for lead in that meat does not strike me as being a simple thing to accomplish. If they cannot absolutely do that then the state Health Dept is going to stop it. The deer are processed by literally dozens if not hundreds of separate processors across the state. The would make it a very expensive and long process to qualify all of them.

The article says they expect the program to start up again this year, but I don't see how they can do it right now.-