Wild Game Meat Warnings

By: Mike Adams - Hooks and Bullets Blog  

   Last week the Michigan Health Assessors Office posted warnings about consuming wild game meat from animals near the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers.  The warnings are linked to the recent discovery of dioxin in, near, and around the waterways downriver from Midland, Michigan.

      Recent samples of wild game meat taken from animals in the floodplain areas of these rivers have shown high levels of dioxin and dioxin like compounds in the muscle and skin tissues of sample animals.  There was a study in 2004 that prompted a health advisory about eating deer, turkey, and squirrels.  Now with the 2007 study the Health Advisors Office is now expanding that list to include, deer, turkey, squirrel, wood duck, and Canada Goose.  In their statement, they said that eating the meat from these animals could result in adverse health effects.

     The Michigan Department of Community Health has issued a set of guidelines for consuming meat from the floodplain area of these rivers.  They include but are not limited to:

• Do not eat the liver from deer harvested from these areas.
• Limit your consumption of deer muscle meat, women of childbearing age and children under 15 to one meal of deer per week.
• Do not eat wild turkey harvested from the floodplain area of these rivers.
• Limit your consumption of squirrel muscle meat, women of childbearing age and children under 15 to one meal of squirrel per week.
• Do not eat the skin from a Canada Goose or Wood Duck harvested from the floodplain area of these rivers.
• Use discrestion when eating any other wild game animal from the floodplain area of these rivers.  Not all animals were tested.
• Trim fat from any animal from this area, this will reduce the exposure to dioxin.
• Do not consume organ meats, such as liver and brains.
• Do not consume the skin of animals from this area.

They are also advising people who eat wildgame and fish from this area, to consume less fish than recomended by the Fish Consumption Advisory to reduce dioxin exposure.

      For further information on this advisory visit: www.michigan.gov/deq and www.michigan.gov/mdch.