It wouldn't surprise me, though I'd guess there's probably a trend for local producers away from that. +1, since I don't know, and look forward to seeing the answers.

For along the lines of a (soft) frame challenge (for another to use in an answer maybe), apparently the amount of estrogenic compounds that ends up in hormone "implanted" beef is so small as to be insignificant. "A 3-ounce serving of beef from an implanted steer has 1.9 nanograms of estradiol, and a 3-ounce serving of beef from a non-implanted calf has 1.3 nanograms" [extension.uga.edu/publications/… ]. You'd have to eat thousands of hamburgers to affect your hormone levels.

Some endocrine disruptors have effects at p.p.t. concentrations. (1 million ppt = 1 ppm) The question isn't just about an affect on levels of one natural hormone; but extends to hormonal effects of things that aren't natural hormones and aren't estrogenic. This suggests nanograms per 3 oz may be significant. Perhaps you meant to say "You'd have to eat thousands of hamburgers to affect estrogenic activity" ?

@fredsbend: The question doesn't discuss residual hormone amounts in the food chain, and is not about health issues. It's not necessary to bring up these topic, and doing so is actually distracting from the question. It's certainly not a valid frame challenge.

@fredsbend That's not a frame challenge. It is unhealthy for the cow, which is why they're banned in many places. The health of humans eating the cow is a red herring and a distraction from the real problem. I don't know if such animal abuse is legal and widespread practice anywhere else.

@Schmuddi I called it a soft frame challenge. Answers are always obligated to answer the exact question. It's entirely relevant because most people who bring this up do so with concerns for health. That's the point of quoting the factoid. This question's claim source is one example, with a whopper of an equivocation: "this means that when you eat meat, chicken or pork, and drink milk, you are consuming unsafe drugs that weren’t prescribed to you." So, yes, it's relevant.

@gerrit I was going to add, "animal welfare notwithstanding", but ran out of character space. Your claim that China and the EU have these regs for the animal is one I'm skeptical of.

@MatthewElvey I was just poking around some potential sources for an answer and found that. It's oft-repeated. Perhaps worth a separate question if you think it's a false statement.

@Schmuddi It's not a hunch. And yes, the implicit claim matters. Thorough answers at least mention it. Misleading answers pretend it doesn't exist.

@fredsbend: "It's not a hunch" – that's a rough way to start a rather disappointing reply. What you're saying is "If a question is about X, and if that question uses an article that discusses X, but also Y, a thorough answer should at least mention Y even though it was never asked about. This should be done so because I believe most people who ask about X are actually interested in Y." I don't think that this is really the usual practice here on skeptics.SE, especially the "because I believe so" part.

No that's not what I'm saying.

I think I'm very clear when I say that if a factoid is true and is typically oft-repeated so that a larger lie can be propagated, then we should feel obligated to address the larger lie.

This is the thrust of my recent meta post, though the focus is on politics and news media.

The concept that you can lie with facts.

> [At Skeptics we] debunk falsities and illuminate the truth. It's not enough to debunk the false. Show the truth too. Good answers are accurate (which debunks), but truth often requires thoroughness.

I'll have a look at your meta post before I will reply.

Think about it in terms of any answer you might give. I'm sure it would upset you greatly if your factually correct answer was linked many times only so that people could use it to propagate a related falsity. We should guard against this.

@Schmuddi Thank you. I focus on politics in that meta post because often this is a problem for our politics questions. It doesn't usually become a problem for plain science questions.

I'll be away for most of the day, but will reply eventually. Of course, replies directly related to the meta post are perhaps better made there.

Okay. I can see where you're coming from. But you open a can of worms with your assumption that this is about the "larger lie".

For instance, I was genuinely interested in the question because while I knew that steroids are frequently used in the US in cattle farming, I had no idea about the extent of it. You see, it's indeed very different in the EU. So your assumption of the actual intent of asking this is very much shaped by your own expectations – that others do not necessarily share.

This introduces a degree of subjectivity to the answers that I don't think is very healthy for this site.

@fredsbend: I should probably have tagged you.

@Schmuddi Does that change for politics topics?

"Good subjective" is an SE theory from the old days. There's a blog post somewhere. Either Spolsky's or Atwood's, I think.

@fredsbend See, that's the exactly dilemma we're talking about: to me, this isn't a political question but a question about steroid use in US cattle farming. But apparently to you, this question is a political topic? Not even a health education topic, but a political one? Then it's really true that everything is political in the US these days...