With all the stuff going on lately, I let the news about Minnesota’s decision to test all hunter-donated venison for lead slip right by. In a nutshell, though, here’s what’s going on.
Most of you have been along for the ride since North Dakota had the big scare about lead fragments in venison that had been donated to food banks by hunters. Immediately afterward, several other states, including MN pulled all of the venison off the food bank shelves in a blind panic. Of course it made sense in a way, since if there’s an inkling of a health threat, the States can’t just let it be. Thus followed several independent and government sponsored tests, not the smallest of which was the North Dakota Department of Health and Centers for Diseases Control (CDC) blood testing program. The program tested 700 state residents, some of whom had eaten venison harvested with lead ammo and some of whom had not. I reported on the results of that a little while back.
Minnesota had also been up to some experimenting, firing bullets of all types into sheep carcasses to investigate the actual dispersal of lead fragments. Their research showed that softer, high-speed projectiles tended to fragment the most, while slower and more solid (bonded or copper) bullets didn’t. I expect there’s not a hunter in the country who didn’t already know that, but hey… that’s what tax money is for, right… to do experiments to demonstrate what we already knew to be true?
So, speaking of tax money, you folks in Minnesota should be happy to know your State has found an even better use for it now. As you can read in this article from the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, they’ll be x-raying every bit of hunter-donated venison before it’s allowed to go to the food banks for distribution. The move was justified due to the finding that approximately 5.3% of randomly sampled, donated, venison still contained lead fragments, even after an extended education campaign aimed at hunters and meat processors.
From the article:
The findings also cast doubt on the future of the fledging venison-donation program, launched just last year. Funding comes from $160,000 appropriated by the Legislature, an increase in nonresident hunting license fees and hunter donations.
But X-raying all of the venison is expensive, Neeser said. The state is paying a firm 30 cents a pound to screen it. The frozen venison will be collected from processors around the state and shipped to the Twin Cities, where it will be screened in an X-ray machine similar to those used at airports, Neeser said. That should be completed by mid-December.
I’m not the only one to question this plan. J.R. Robbins wrote a pretty good piece about it on the NRA Hunters’ Rights website, and there are references to it across the hunting blogs.
So what do you think? Is it a good idea? Bad idea? Waste of money, or worthwhile expenditure for public health?
Considering humans have been eating meat that was brought to table my a projectile for a number of years – with no ill effects thus far – I just think this is an absolute waste of money. Period!