Hormones in Poultry Food in Australia

No hormones are added to poultry food sold in Australia! It has been illegal to add hormones to food for either laying or meat birds for over half a century in Australia. Similar laws exist in many countries.

Quite a lot of poultry foods state that they have no added hormones. This is true, but the implication that other poultry foods have hormones is not.

Hormones may be used in feed for beef cattle., and some people worry that meat meal in poultry food might contain hormones that possibly could get into eggs laid by the hens eating the food.

I’m not aware of evidence of this happening, but some people prefer to give their hens food without meat meal.

Below are some poultry foods which contain no meat meal.

Mad Cow Disease

Mad Cow Disease or Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a fatal disease that became a problem after 1986. Many of the cases were in the UK, but several other countries had cases. 

It has never been recorded in Australia. 

Here is a timeline of BSE.

People eating cows infected by BSE can develop an extremely nasty disease called Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease (vCJD). While vCJD is quite rare, it is totally devastating for anyone who gets it, and for their families.

BSE was caused by feeding meat meal and similar products to cattle. 

A common practice in both England and Australia used to be that meat meal was used as a cheap source of protein in prepared feeds for many animals, including cattle.

At Willunga High School, in the 1960s, I was surprised to learn in agricultural science that meat meal from cattle was being fed to cattle. It seemed strange to me for two reasons. Firstly, because cattle are herbivores and normally eat plants. Secondly because of my feeling that cannibalism is not a good thing.

Australian Law

After the outbreaks of BSE and the discovery of link to vCJD, the law in Australia was changed in 1996.

Australia now has an inclusive ban on the feeding to all ruminants of all meals, including meat and bone meal (MBM), derived from all vertebrates, including fish and birds.

On poultry food, you may see a warning like:

WARNING!
THIS FEED CONTAINS RESTRICTED ANIMAL MATERIAL DO NOT FEED TO CATTLE SHEEP, GOATS, DEER OR OTHER RUMINANTS.

You should only feed animal foods to the types of animal specified on the label!
If there is any chance of sheep, goats, deer, alpacas or other ruminants accidentally getting to your chook food, you could use meat free food for the chooks, but it would be much better to ensure that only the chooks can get to the food.

After the law was changed, a man from the government department responsible visited our shop and explained the requirements of the law. We weigh out into smaller bags some types of poultry food. This is quite legal, but a label with the warning needs to be put on the bags. A week later, the man came back and looked at the labels I'd designed and used on the bags, and passed them as correct.
As well as the warning labels, we also have to put a label on certain products, saying that they do not contain restricted animal material. For example, rabbit pellets don't have any meat meal in, (rabbits and guinea pigs are herbivores, and feeding them meat meal could damage their livers), so I made labels saying that that don't contain restricted animal material.