Franklin, I think you make some good points, but you are conflating contamination of the food supply—a point, which to repeat a second time, I don’t disagree with—with a significant risk of testing positive for CB. The two do not necessarily go hand and hand, and none of the links you have provided indicate that the one results in the other.
Seriously. Food testing is as bad as doping testing. I know farmers and you would be amazed and shocked by the issues. That you are even arguing this is cute, but is ill befitting of the clinic
I’ll note in passing the irony of this statement. All your evidence of meat contamination is based on such testing. E.g., you completely accept the results of testing that revealed horse or pig meat in beef. But you apparently don’t accept the same testing when it comes to safeguarding imported meat.
I think what you mean is that, just as dopers can beat the tests in cycling, they can beat the tests in livestock, too. We discussed this during the Contador case. Dopers beat the tests in cycling by making sure most or all of the drug has left their bodies by the time they’re tested. Ranchers do the same. To the extent that they’re successful, there isn’t a contamination problem.
OTOH, if what you mean is that the tests are a joke, that ranchers bribe their way past controls, or have positives covered up, you will have to provide more evidence that this is widespread. It may happen occasionally, I haven’t seen evidence that it happens a large proportion of the time
with beef and CB. Again, the scandal you refer to is horsemeat, and the main concern is phenylbutazone. CB is not even mentioned in that article.
Flat out false. Seriously. There were cmplete steaks of horsemeat. So how you make up that they were only partly horsemeat is flat out false. And yes, this was extremely widespread. And yes, the origin of the meat was well obscufated by relabeling.
I said “most”. The link you provided documents this. I read through it. E.g.:
Of the ten burger products that tested positive for equine DNA, all but one was at low levels
Of the 37% of beef products tested positive for horse DNA, Tesco's inexpensive Everyday Value Beef Burgers tested at 29.1%. All other reported brands had less than 0.3% horse DNA.
The Swiss-based company Nestlé reported on 18 February 2013 that it had found more than 1% horse DNA in two beef pasta products.
Further, contamination levels were low:
A subsequent review of 206 horse carcasses slaughtered in the UK between 30 January and 7 February 2013 found eight were contaminated with phenylbutazone.
Another report found that between two and five percent of samples tested between 2007 and 2011 had phenylbutazone contamination
In 2012, 145 carcasses had been tested, and two out of the nine carcasses found positive for bute
the FSA reported it had not only found more than 1% horse DNA in Asda's 340 gram tins of "Smart Price Corned Beef" but it also contained four ppb of phenylbutazone
This goes back to your misunderstanding or ignoring of statistics. The fact that there is “a lot” of contaminated meat out there doesn’t mean that there is a large proportion of it. Tens of billions of pounds of meat are consumed in America and Europe annually. Even a hundred million pounds of contaminated meat would be a drop in the bucket. Have you seen any studies estimating the probability that any one individual actually ate this meat?
And even if someone does eat it, it doesn’t mean there is a high risk of its containing bute, let alone CB. And even if it does contain CB, that doesn’t mean it contains enough to trigger a positive test.
I will say yet again I’m not pooh-poohing the dangers to human health. Modern societies are supposed to do everything possible to prevent even one person from dying or getting seriously ill from eating contaminated meat. It doesn’t follow that every time there is a failure to do this that the probability of testing positive for CB goes up.
Again, thank you for fully agreeing. Not sure what you are arguing, but thank you.
So you really don’t understand my argument, but like the old pro-war Senators, are going to declare victory and withdraw. If you can’t understand simple statistics, and if you can’t understand how much contamination is required to test positive, then you can’t understand that the fact that our food supply is contaminated—which to repeat for the third time, I don’t disagree about—does not mean that the possibility of testing positive for CB is significant.
Sorry, that's false. The veterinary organisation has been sending out warnings again and again. I'm not sure how to explain this, so I'll try it in a way clinic people understand.
Then provide a link documenting this. You haven’t so far.
Chris:
There is a possibility that some meat "get's through", or some level is greater than others.
Sure. But my point was, a threshold doesn’t solve this problem.
Obviously, if you set the threshold way high then the false negatives will be numerous.
No, my point was that what seems to be obvious may in fact not be true.
There are two main factors that determine the CB level in the body: 1) the amount ingested; and 2) the time after ingestion of testing. Generally speaking, a doper will ingest more than someone eating contaminated meat. I imagine a doper takes at least 5-10 ug per day. To get that much from a meal, the meat would have to contain roughly 20-50 ug/kg, which is very heavy contamination. This I think is the reasoning you have in mind, even if it’s not with specific numbers, when you say that a high threshold will increase false negatives. Since dopers are ingesting more CB than meat eaters, it seems natural to conclude that the higher the threshold, the more likely a doper taking large amounts gets off.
But that ignores the second factor, the timing of testing. A doper will attempt to take CB at a time when he least expects to be tested, and maybe will even make himself scarce at that time. He certainly won’t take it right before or during a race. Someone eating meat, even with all the warnings out there, will not be so careful. So the odds are that dopers will be tested at longer periods of time after ingestion than meat eaters, when more of the CB has been eliminated from the body. To the extent that this occurs, it means a higher level means doping is less likely, not more likely. You might actually have fewer false negatives, and yes, more false positives, with a higher level.
Nobody knows, of course, to what extent this second factor is in play. My point is just that to the extent that it does occur, it opposes 1), with the result that there tends to be no correlation of level with origin (doping or meat) at all. But since we don't know, we really don't know that a threshold will help separate dopers from accidental ingestion.
Of course, a threshold at any level will ensure that some athletes get off, and some of them will be meat eaters. So in that sense, you're right that a threshold will have some benefit. But again, in the absence of knowing the relationship between a threshold and origin of CB, you could achieve the exact same result simply by declaring a certain random % of positives as getting off. That will have the same effect of ensuring some accidental ingesters get off, and the same price of letting off many dopers.
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