Treating cattle with hormones to promote growth is a common practice in the United States beef production market. You may have concerns as to whether consuming cattle treated with hormones affects your health. The safety of consuming such beef is still under debate and so far, science lacks enough data to reach a conclusion. Whether eating hormone treated beef affects your thyroid remains unknown. But, there is information for you to consider when deciding whether to consume these products.
Background
U.S cattle are commonly treated with powerful steroid hormones including estrogen, testosterone and progesterone. Hormone-treated beef is not new. In 1988, the European Union banned the import of U.S beef for this reason. The U.S Food and Drug Administration asserts that the hormone levels found in beef are not high enough to cause adverse health effects. However, there are no studies examining the effect of hormone-treated beef on human health to know for sure.
Thyroid
Your endocrine system is a complex group of hormone-secreting glands. These glands, including your thyroid, secrete hormones that act on every cell and organ in your body. Your thyroid gland is one of the smallest endocrine glands, weighing only about a gram. It secretes hormones that regulate your metabolic system, which influences a wide variety of functions, including the rate at which your body burns energy. Your pituitary gland -- located in your brain, controls endocrine hormone secretion to keep hormone levels balanced.
Endocrine Dysruption
Because hormones found in areas densely populated with feed lots affect nearby waters, University of Florida researchers examined how this affects the fathead minnow fish species. Their research, published in the March 2004 issue of the journal "Environmental Health Perspectives," found that the hormones disrupted their pituitary system, which disrupted their endocrine system, causing both male and female fish to produce less sex hormones and have an unbalanced ratio of estrogens to androgens. The pituitary system controls all endocrine functioning, including the thyroid in humans.
Considerations
Unlike protein hormones, which are broken down in the digestive system, steroid hormones act on your body when consumed. An example of this is oral birth control pills. Because detectable levels of hormones remain in the tissues of cattle, it remains a debate whether it is safe for human consumption. This concern has lead to an increased trend of consumers choosing organically raised cattle. This is an option if you are concerned that hormone-treated beef may adversely affect the health of your thyroid or other endocrine glands.
