COULD THIS BE WHY CHICKEN IS SO DELICIOUS?

Just some info from Grist for those of you who eat chicken for lunch and dinner - after you read it , think again about starting another week doing same!

Its still standard practice on chicken AFOs (Animal Feeding Operations) to dose the birds with arsenic. Arsenic makes the birds grow faster and helps control a common intestinal disease of chickens.
This means, among other problems, an ecological disaster wherever the poultry industry is concentrated. The Delmarva Peninsula, historically one of the most productive fisheries in the U.S., is now nearly an ecological wasteland. Researchers estimate that between 11 and 12 metric tons of arsenic are applied to agricultural land there every year through poultry waste, and arsenic in some household wells reaches up to 13 times the EPA tolerance limit.
But that's far from the only worry. According to Grist:
"Then there's the question of arsenic traces in industrial chicken meat. In 2006, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) tested chicken samples from supermarkets and fast-food joints -- and found that 55 percent contained detectable arsenic."
Dr. Mercola's Comments:It’s chemical name is Roxarsone, and it’s widely used on chicken AFOs (Animal Feeding Operations) to control an intestinal parasite that allows the chickens to feed more productively and grow faster (it’s also used in AFO pig feed, although today I am focusing solely on chickens).
There are also several other reasons why you should avoid conventionally raised chickens in your supermarket, which I will go into below.
Use of “Organic Arsenic” is Common Practice
Roxarsone bills itself as an “organic” form of arsenic, which means it contains both carbon and arsenic, rendering it less toxic. The problem is this “organic” arsenic quickly turns into inorganic arsenic, especially once it passes through a chicken (or pig), and that’s where the trouble really begins.
Inorganic arsenic is a toxic poison that ends up both in the chicken meat and the chicken litter that is commonly used as fertilizer on surrounding fields. (For some reason chicken litter is also routinely fed to AFO beef, thereby contaminating them as well).
This inorganic arsenic “byproduct” created inside the chickens is distributed either to market where you consume it with your chicken meat, or it’s dispersed into the environment (by rainfall and watering) wherever the chicken litter is spread as fertilizer. This dispersed arsenic will eventually end up in your drinking water, and in lakes and oceans which are rapidly losing the ability to support life.
Folks, in 2010, AFOs in the US raised 40 billion pounds of chicken.
This is not a small amount of arsenic we are talking about. According to the article above, 11 to 12 million pounds of this converted inorganic arsenic is going into the environment in the form of chicken litter fertilizer. The people responsible for this massive poisoning of your chicken meat and your environment assure us that the Roxarsone they use is completely harmless, despite the fact that runoff from AFOs has been documented again and again poisoning the environment.
This is just another example of AFOs getting a free pass from the government to do whatever they want to increase both their output and profits, as runoff from AFOs is largely unregulated by the federal laws meant to prevent pollution and protect the quality of drinking water in wells.
Government, especially lately the Republicans in Congress, are always looking for ways to help these large farming corporations avoid regulations meant to protect the environment because they have a fear of upsetting their “client-partners” in industry.
The Problem with Arsenic
Continuous daily or weekly ingestion of arsenic, which could likely happen to you through eating of contaminated chicken meat on a weekly basis (or pig meat or cow meat), or through exposure to drinking water contaminated by high levels of arsenic, has been associated with skin cancer, bladder cancer and lung cancer.
The exact mechanism of arsenic poisoning is not known, but it is thought to compromise your immune system.
Arsenic does occur naturally in groundwater, but is often added to the environment through many other means (besides AFOs) at greater levels than found in nature. For instance, arsenic is used as a wood preservative (and until 2003, was a part of wood treatments for decks and playground equipment), in pesticides, and in special kinds of glass.
Some other problems associated with arsenic poisoning include:
Thickening and discoloration of your skin.
Digestive problems such as stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.
Numbness in your hands and feet.
If you think you may have been exposed to long-term arsenic poisoning, you should consult your doctor. Arsenic can be measured in blood, urine, hair, or nails. Of these, a urine test is the simplest way to tell if you are being exposed to dangerous levels of arsenic.
Another problem with all this arsenic being distributed is it creates new arsenic exposure pathways for people (especially children) who come into contact with the fertilizer on lawns, gardens or golf courses. So please think twice before applying chicken fertilizer on anything where you allow your children or pets to play."