Rose Prince, in the Daily Telegraph, has chewed over FSA advice to frequent consumers of lead-shot game and come up with an un-digestible response.
She says that ‘only an idiot would deliberately swallow metal. It’s not rude to spit it out – the ping of shot on Spode is a common sound in the country’. Well I’ve not checked my tableware recently but, whatever the make, it won’t be resounding to the ping of lead-shot.
If you find a piece of shot in game pie and are able to spit it out, all well and good. However, our research suggests that this does not account for fragments or pieces that may have already been dissolved as part of the cooking process. The acidic properties in, for example, a game casserole cooked with red wine, can mean that the lead dissolves and is therefore more easily absorbed by the body.
Lead bullets and ammunition can also splinter when entering the body of a game bird, meaning that there’s a chance of having fragments dispersed through the carcass, not all of which would be visible to the naked eye. And, sorry Rose, we can’t rely on all game dealers running a metal detector over their produce.
I would add that our advice is for people who eat lead-shot game very regularly and particularly for pregnant women or women intending to get pregnant. It doesn’t apply to farmed game, which you will find in the supermarket.