moultonk wrote:
rojo wrote:
I have now made it so it impossible for this thread to be deleted by a moderator.
Is there anyway to provide a summary of what you've found?
It's back, thank you Rojo! Sorry, the thread got buried and I didn't see its return til now. Above all, it was meant to highlight Hülsemann's 2020 study on boar meat, and offer a theory as to why WADA might have gotten SH's case wrong. But to summarize:
It's clear that athletes coming from countries with small-scale farming have a much greater chance of consuming pork tainted with steroids than those countries with large centralized factory-farming and processing, and this difference could be used to suppress, for example, Kenyan and Ethiopian athletes. Given the history, this might not be just an innocent oversight by WADA but something more sinister.
I also suggest the reason why WADA and researchers focus on wild boars even though any male domestic pig is also capable of producing steroids naturally, is because of the (faulty) assumption that all domestic pigs eat a diet high in corn, which would allow substances excreted from them to be more easily identified than wild boars. This assumption could explain why WADA thought the nandrolone did not come from pork ingested by SH.
However, the pork industry was upended in Oregon in 2020 due to the pandemic and this would have resulted in a greater likelihood of SH having received tainted pork, particularly in chorizo sausage which is very commonly offered at Mexican restaurants and sometimes used by food processors to disguise boar taint.
Lastly, athletes getting tested by WADA need to know:
-Steroids exist naturally in normal (uncastrated) male pork, not just wild boar.
-Pork meat alone (not only offal) can generate an adverse test result.
-Such pork is healthy/legal to sell and is often in the food supply.
-Pork offal exists in many common foods, primarily as sausage (think pizza toppings, hot dogs, bologna, bratwurst, liverwurst, and other types but especially Braunschweiger which is USDA-mandated to be at least 30% liver).