For more than four decades, American ranchers and farmers have been injecting tiny pellets of hormones into the ears of cattle raised for beef.
The drugs, delivered with needle-tipped guns, are sex hormones sold under such names as Steer-Oid, Ralgro and Synovex, and they make the animals grow faster and produce more meat for every dollar spent on grain and hay.
The procedure, which is as quick as a vaccination, has become routine in the U.S., where three out of four cattle raised for beef are treated with one or more hormones.
But it won't be routine in Europe any time soon. Not only is the practice illegal there, but the European Union has refused for a decade to permit imports of beef from hormone-treated cattle.
Now the transatlantic beef has brought the United States and the EU to the brink of a trade war, joining bananas on what is becoming a full plate of U.S.-Europe trade disputes.
Acting on behalf of the $36-billion-a-year U.S. cattle industry, Washington is threatening to retaliate with tariffs on selected European products unless the EU lifts its beef ban by May 13, as it has been ordered to do by the World Trade Organization.
The Europeans claim the ban is a matter of protecting consumer health; U.S. officials and cattle ranchers call it a pretext for old-fashioned protectionism.
Just how safe are these hormones used to bring steaks, roasts and hamburgers to American tables, at prices that European consumers would envy?
A number of international health bodies have reviewed the evidence and sided with the U.S.
But the hotly disputed issue illustrates how hard it is to sort out conflicting health claims when the science is complex and those interpreting it often reach conclusions that serve their own political and economic agendas.
Natural Hormone Levels Are High
The U.S. government insists that hormones, when used properly in beef production, are perfectly safe. Indeed, three of the six hormones that can legally be used to promote U.S. livestock growth occur naturally in humans and livestock.
The natural levels are so high that small increases in treated animals are almost impossible to detect and are likely to have no effect on health, federal officials say. That's also the position taken by several international bodies, including the WTO and even a scientific panel assembled by the Europeans.
