In early March, Dr. William Cornatzer, a Bismarck, N.D., dermatologist, marched into the North Dakota Department of Health and announced he’d found lead in donated venison. In this age of frivolous lawsuits, North Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota quickly put their venison donation programs on hold, and North Dakota and Minnesota threw out 17,000 pounds of venison intended for needy families.
How Could This Happen?
With assistance from a radiologist, Cornatzer says he performed a
CT scan of 100 samples of ground venison from three food pantries
and 60 percent of them supposedly contained lead. “I’m concerned
about people’s health,” he said. “That’s the only reason I stepped
out here.”
Cornatzer’s affiliations, however, suggest otherwise. He sits on
the board of directors of the Peregrine Fund, which fought for California’s
ban on lead ammo within the condor range and now has Arizona in its
sights. Any suggestion that lead ammo could harm humans would do
much to further the group’s anti-lead agenda. Cornatzer does not
deny this conflict of interest. And North Dakota health officials
were certainly aware of Cornatzer’s bias.
“We know he has an agenda, we are very much aware of that,” said
Sandi Washek, lead coordinator for the North Dakota Department of
Health. “It was a darned if you do, darned if you don’t situation.
Cornatzer could have accused us of poisoning low-income families.”
So Washek sent samples to the University of Iowa’s renowned hygienic
lab. Some samples had no detectable lead, while others had several
thousand parts per million. Those sound like damning numbers, but
North Dakota’s sampling procedure has several flaws. Just ask the
man who performed the study!
“I think North Dakota is drawing the wrong conclusions,” said Rick
Kelley, assistant director of the hygienic lab. Kelley says North
Dakota used an x-ray to isolate suspected lead particles. The most
serious error is that only the particles and a pinch of surrounding
meat, rather than the entire 1-pound venison package, were tested.
It’s little wonder, then, why North Dakota’s data indicate high concentrations
of lead. “We did what North Dakota asked,” said Kelley, “but they
did not take an arbitrary sample. If you take a lead bullet and test
it for lead, guess what, you’ll find lead. Deer are very large animals.
Bullets are fairly small and I don’t care how they fragment, that’s
a very small amount of lead for the amount of meat that comes off
the deer.”
Hunters occasionally pluck pellets from pheasant breasts, and Kelley
says the lead fragments North Dakota sent were large enough for detection
at the dinner table. Cornatzer disagrees, claiming in some cases
the lead is a fine powder.
“If you shoot a deer in the neck, you may have contaminated the entire
front quarters, because the lead can travel a foot and a half,” Cornatzer
asserts. “In North Dakota we shoot a lot of deer on the run. If a
deer is shot in the hind quarter and the bullet exits the front shoulder,
I suspect, but can’t say for a fact, that the entire deer could be
contaminated with lead.”
Cornatzer and Kelley based their opposing views on the same venison
samples, which actually points to another flaw in North Dakota’s
research: Rather than collecting random samples of venison in order
to reflect the average food pantry’s inventory, they used the packages
given to them by Cornatzer. In doing so, they put faith in the validity
of samples collected by an individual with an admitted agenda. Five
of the packages weren’t even sealed and, incredibly, they were the
ones targeted for punch samples.
Despite Kelley’s concerns, he sent in the requested data. Three weeks
later, 5,000 pounds of venison were in North Dakota landfills.
Darren LaSorte, NRA-ILA director of hunting policy, said, “The actions
of the North Dakota health department exemplify bureaucratic incompetence,
but rest assured, NRA-ILA will continue to do everything possible
to ensure science and reason prevail.”
Science Prevails in Iowa
Get this, Kelley also did a study for the Iowa Department of Natural
Resources (DNR). Prompted by the events in North Dakota, Iowa temporarily
froze distribution of 100,000 pounds of venison and sent samples
to Kelley for testing. Afterward, Iowa quickly resumed its venison
donation program. So, why did two states reach two very different
conclusions?
“Unlike North Dakota, Iowa randomly selected 10 packages of ground
venison from an area food bank,” said Kelley.
Eight packages had no detectable lead, while two had insignificant
levels (well under one part per million). “Our little study was not
all that sufficient,” said Ross Harrison, coordinator of the Iowa
DNR’s Help Us Stop Hunger program, “but our health department believes
testing for lead in venison is a half-stop measure.”
Simply testing the venison leaves many unanswered questions. For
instance, nobody denies that lead is harmful, but how much must be
consumed to raise its level in the blood? If lead is found in venison,
is it from a hunter’s bullet or lead in the deer’s diet? Is lead
contamination limited to certain processors?
Harrison says, “We’ve been hanging our hat on one thing: The Iowa
state health department has tested 500,000 Iowans under 6 years old
for lead poisoning since 1992 (that’s 70 percent of all Iowans born
after 1986). Also, 25,000 adults have been tested, and there’s never
been a single case of lead poisoning from wild game.”
Nearly all the Iowa children who tested positive for lead had come
into contact with lead-based paint, which can contain up to 500,000
parts per million of lead.
On the national level, doctors are required to report all cases of
lead poisoning to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), and, according
to Kimball Credle, CDC public health advisor, no cases have ever
been traced to wild game.
Where Does it Go from Here?
At press time, venison donation programs remained on hold in Wisconsin,
Minnesota and North Dakota pending further study, and California
appeared ready to enter the fracas. Ultimately, the issue may hinge
on the CDC, which plans to test known venison consumers in North
Dakota for elevated levels of lead. Meanwhile, the Peregrine Fund
was preparing for a conference May 12-15 in Boise, Idaho, titled
“Ingestion of Spent Lead Ammunition: Implications for Wildlife
and Humans.” (See it for yourself: peregrinefund.org/Lead_conference/)
Guess who’s on the list of guest speakers: Dr. Cornatzer! He’ll
be presenting his unpublished “study,” which further explains its
timing.
“I’m just going to be presenting this research to show that it’s
not just the condors that risk exposure to lead, it’s we as hunters,”
he said.
The use of scant evidence and scare tactics is nothing new to the
Peregrine Fund, which used junk science to help pass California’s
lead ban. (They play down Dr. Richard Peddicord’s June 2007 report,
“Summary of Science for Ammunition as the Source of Lead in Condors,”
which found no evidence to suggest lead ammo is affecting condor
populations.)
Cornatzer will be preaching to an anti-lead choir
at the conference, but convincing hunters they’re poisoning themselves
one backstrap at a time will be a tougher sell. Harrison expressed
a sentiment for all to bear in mind: “We in the United States have
been hunting with lead ammunition for hundreds of years, and there
are no cases of anyone getting sick.”
Around the Nation
Lead Ban Proposal Dies in MN
State Senator Satveer Chaudhary
introduced a bill with a misguided provision—one that would have banned the use
of lead shot by small-game hunters on Minnesota public lands—but he withdrew
it four days after meeting with your NRA and Federal Cartridge Corp. “I
was led to believe this homework was done,” Chaudhary said. In a statement, Chaudhary
noted there are 1,000 employees at Federal’s Anoka, Minn., facility and there
is a complete lack of proof that lead ammo is harming small game. However, Dave
Schad, fish and wildlife section chief for the Minnesota Department of Natural
Resources (DNR), told the Minnesota Star-Tribune he’s disappointed the bill died;
in fact, the Minnesota DNR advocates banning lead ammo. NRA-ILA will continue
following the issue and will take action as necessary.
