Country Fried Mergies

[John Unruh]

Mergies , I love em, my dawgs like them more, especially in training sessions! As for contaminants in them ,well you need to explain to me how you get those chemicals out of our drinking water that we recieve from the Great Lakes, til then I cannot believe eating a few ducks is gonna hurt you anymore than eating what is being sold in the grocery store with a tremendous shelf life. Til then sure would like to hear some more lawn dart recipes!

 

[Jeff Reardon]

I don't know much about accumulation of toxins in ducks, but for fish, there are two critical factors.

(1) Is there a local source of contamination? Here in Maine, a section of the Kennebec River is closed to consumption of all fish due to historic PCB contamination, and a section of the Penobscot River is closed to consumption of fish, and even closed to lobstering due to historic mercury contamination.

(2) Where does the critter sit on the food chain? Top predators and scavengers can accumulate a lot; herbivores are a lot less risky.

Still, on that section of the Penobscot, there is a warning against consuming any ducks--which is too bad, because there is some very nice black duck habitat in there that I'd love to hunt.

 

[Darin Clark]

John
Gotta agree with the grocery store part. In the Army we had “shelf stable” milk. What do you do to milk so that it won’t spoil at room temperature!?[huh][huh][huh]

 

[RLLigman]

Well, Mr. Unruh, the EPA that Andy Pruitt is trying his best to hamstring at his master's behest, passed through restrictions placing all municipalities several years ago to ensure it was safe for your consumption, whether it's source is the Great Lakes, or some other surface or groundwater source:

https://www.epa.gov/dwstandardsregulations/background-drinking-water-standards-safe-drinking-water-act-sdwa

You make an interesting point with regard to your grocery store products, since much of the produce you consume during winter months is sourced from countries that often still use insecticides that are or were banned in the U.S. some years ago...Consumers Reports has covered the precautions and approaches to diminishing consumption risk(s), as well as addressing arsenic consumption risks in both domestic and offshore rice varieties. Food additives for used for preservation purposes wouldn't be at the top of my list of compounds whose routine consumption poses significant background risk.

Here in Michigan, as well as in several other States, there is a growing consensus that, rather than assessing risk via screening analyses of individual compounds deemed to dangerous for routine Public consumption, risk should be stratified for suites of chemicals that have similar broad effects on specific vertebrate organ systems i.e. brain/CNS, kidney, liver.

If I were attempting to assess my risk of consumption of mergansers, I would first factor-in where I was within a flyway,then attempt to determine where the principal migration corridors are within my State and where these birds are "sourced" from. If the birds coming into my hunting area are originating from multiple areas(river systems or large lakes) where background pollution is high, my personal consumption would be zero.

 

[John Unruh]

Well Mr. Ligman, all I know about winter months food that we consume ,is continuing to come through Canada & the U.S. During the summer months also. As for the ingredients put in the food for shelf life ,myself & many others feel the same way ,( Not good). As for eating the odd duck from Lake Erie or any of the Great Lakes for that matter , I personally don't feel that they will do any more harm compared to what is being put in human food .
Just my 2 cents!

 

[RLLigman]

How odd, John, the produce section source of origin labels I reference at the two grocery stores we frequent read like the member list of the U.N.! Arsenic content in domestically produced rice is largely a function of the background soil levels it is cultivated in. Very little winter produce is hot house grown in Canada or the United States, outside of tomatoes. You can rationalize your personal risk; read-in, or read-out, however you wish. This doesn't alter the composite risk actions you incur.

As Vince offered, healthy people die every day: just generally not at the same ages as the unhealthy cohort they would be contrasted against, for the statement to validly reflect a broad array of existing epidemiologic trail data...composite risk, oddly enough, does add-up, frequently resulting in adverse sequelae. Whether the relationship is strictly linear or curvilinear is, as well as the rate of inflection induced in the resulting function, via the array of independent variables chosen, remains a point of continued focus and interest.