So quit friggin typing “ug” already.
Unless you’re talking about these:
It’s illegal when used for this purpose (killing blood lice) on chicken farms in combination with the legal chemicals. The argument for using it: they say it’s more effective, and probably cheaper.
The reason they got away with it that long, there was no targeted test for Fipronil.
“Because the use of fipronil is illegal in the production of food for human consumption in Europe, a criminal investigation has been initiated.”
That are Uggs, with double g! 
That’s completely stupid though, innit. The crucial argument against Fipronil is not that its toxic to humans (most pesticides are) but that it causes CCD. It’ll cause CCD whether you put it on chickens, crops, or just fling it around like fairy dust. The intended purpose is utterly irrelevant.
Notice the chicken farmers in the article were hauled up not because they were using fipronil, but because they were using it without a license - as if a rubber stamp and some silly marks on a piece of paper makes the side-effects go away. WTF is wrong with policymakers’ heads these days?
Any more of that and I’ll SWITCH TO BAUDOT. Lower case characters, pshaw.
Nope, no license issues:
“Fipronil is commonly used to rid agricultural produce of pests or to kill fire ants and termites, Toxic and Chemical Substances Bureau Director Hsieh Yen-ju (謝燕儒) said, adding that the chemical is forbidden for use with animals to be used for food.”. Same in Europe.
I checked with my colleague to get the inside scoop.
Actually I made a few errors.
The 0.005mg/KG (5ppb) is just the MRL , the minimum reportable level.
The labs can easily analyze this with high accuracy and precision as the minimum level of quantitation is routinely 5,10 , 100 or a 1000 times lower.
So the minimum reportable level (which is why you see 5ppb mentioned) is far above the analytical limit of sentivity. If the chemical is detected at lower levels than that it will be mentioned but the quantity will not be reported.
The only report on what they regard is the toxicological harm level.
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I checked with my colleague to get the inside scoop.
Actually I made a few errors.
The 0.005mg/KG (5ppb) is just the MRL , the minimum reportable level.
The labs can easily analyze this with high accuracy and precision as the minimum level of quantitation is routinely 5,10 , 100 or a 1000 times lower.
So the minimum reportable level (which is why you see 5ppb mentioned) is far above the analytical limit of sentivity. If the chemical is detected at lower levels than that it will be mentioned but the quantity will not be reported.
The only report on what they regard is the toxicological harm level.
So the 5ppb mentioned in the article was correct?
So we really are talking about fractions of a microgram (that one’s for you, Rocket) per egg. Incredible.
Ah, OK, the article seems to have misreported that then.
So, it’s legal for everything in my huo guo to contain fipronil, in any amount, but a miniscule trace eight orders of magnitude below the lethal dose in the egg or the chicken slices is just cause for a mass cull?
Seriously, the world is going f’ing mad. They make up these dumbass rules, it seems to me, to gloss over the fact that poisons are routinely over-used on pretty much everything except their irrelevant exceptions. TBH I have no problem with them making life hell for battery-chicken farmers. I object to them making life hell for the chickens. I just wish they’d chase people down for sensible reasons - animal welfare and human health - instead of bizarre gotchas in laws that don’t protect anybody.
Yes, I’m aware you can use it there for some things but not for others.
Numbers matter folks. If you can’t understand relative numbers how do you know how to judge a given opinion is well founded or not?
Divide by thousand each time…simples.
Kg>g>mg>ug>Ng>Pg>fg
L>ml>UL>NL
Ppm = part per million
1 gram in 1000Ls
1 ppm = 1mg/L = 1,000 ppb
1ug/L= 1 ppb
People are must lazy when they finish school to learn some useful metrics.
This stuff matters.
The rules are not dumbass, the farmers use it because it’s cheaper! They don’t follow the rules, it’s actually easy to understand, don’t use for this or that purpose, simple really.
I saw on the news that one of the farms had a high enough concentration that eating just one egg would definitely put you over the limit.
Now remember some people eat multiple eggs a day over years.
This does seem like a serious health concern to be honest.
I do feel sorry for the chickens though the conditions look dreadful.
Sorry, you lost me.
I know the farmers don’t follow the rules. I was pointing out that the rules don’t make any sense in the context of known harms. Making exceptions for this and that application is completely illogical, because it’s still getting into the food chain and/or the environment. It doesn’t matter what route it takes. Either ban the stuff, or don’t.
I’m wondering if some of it gets into the chickens by way of chickenfeed, if it’s permitted for agricultural use. In fact I don’t see how it could not be present somewhere along the line, since it’s permissible for so many other applications.
Yes, that was my point really. They encourage farmers to cram chickens into conditions that inevitably result in disease and pest infestations, and then get all sniffy when the farmers spray noxious chemicals. And then they punish the chickens.
I know chickens tend to attract mites etc like keyboards attract fluff, even under free-range conditions, but if the animal is allowed to dust-bathe they stay at manageable levels.
Seems a bit unlikely, since it’s far more toxic to chickens that it is to humans. The chicken would die long before egg residue levels became high enough to be a serious food-safety issue.
The lethal dose of Fipronil for a human, incidentally, is apparently about 5g. That’s in the same ballpark as sodium nitrite. Check out the regulations for sodium nitrite. I know different chemicals will behave very differently at sub-lethal doses, but I’m not convinced that’s meaningful when you’re talking about micrograms vs. grams, even in the case of bioaccumulators (Fipronil apparently isn’t one).
That was what I was thinking about at first, but then they reported that it came by spraying.
I saw a TV report where they showed the bottles and the farmer said he didn’t know it was a problem to spray the chickens . I believe they were spraying the chickens directly.
Doesn’t surprise me in the least. The guys around me are endlessly spraying God-knows-what. Most of them never even went to school. As far as they’re concerned it’s all made from unicorn horns and pixie poop; they have absolutely no clue what any of that stuff does. They just go on the general principle that if you spray enough of this and that you’ll eventually spray the one that works.
I hope you have a nice piss, Arnold!
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The direct quote from one of them was ‘how were we supposed to know this was a problem?’.
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I eat lots of eggs, sometimes 2, sometimes even 3 or 4 in a day. Is this chemical going to do me any harm?
I’ve never understood why almost every civilisation on Earth delegates its food supply to those least capable of delivering it, or those who have an enormous chip on their shoulder about their miserable lot in life. Farmers everywhere seem to have roughly the same social status as septic-tank cleaners, and take slightly less pride in their jobs.
It’s probably no worse than all the other shit you’ll find in eggs. And in everything else.
Personally I always buy the (supposedly) free range ones, or the ones in the market labelled ‘土雞蛋’, but I’ve no doubt those are mislabelled and mismanaged too.