Know your food pt. 2: Prozac, antihistamines, acetaminophen, enrofloxacin in your chicken?

Following up on the "Know Your Food" trail, we get this recent story from Chemical and Engineering News about how, just like a human who has a nail or hair test to determine what drugs he or she may have been taking while employed at a workplace, you can do the same with animals. What researchers have been finding is rather alarming. 

"They tested each sample for 59 fungicides, antibiotics, and other compounds using liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry. The researchers found 24 drugs and personal-care products, including the antibiotics ciprofloxacin, enrofloxacin, and tetracycline; antihistamines; the pain reliever acetaminophen; and fluoxetine, better known as Prozac."

"...the team also detected strictly human-use substances such as caffeine and the hormone norgestimate, which is used in oral contraceptives and to treat adverse symptoms of menopause."

And apparently the high-temperature treatment of the byproducts that become "chicken meal" or "feather meal" that's used for a variety of purposes (including, in a nature-defying move, being fed back to the chickens) don't break down all the chemical concentration and compounds. 

"They found that most of the chemicals tested partially broke down, but at least 20% of each of the parent compounds remained."

Read more of this story here: http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/web/2012/03/Chicken-Feathers-Carry-Drugs.html