Orville Schell

(AMARILLO, TX) — During any other year, those in attendance at the Texas Beef Conference would have gathered for a few seminars on grain processing and manure disposal, taken a break for cocktails before sitting down to a barbecue sponsored by the “T-Bone Club”, and that would have been that. But this year when the Conference opened in the Amarillo, Texas Hilton Inn, things were a little different. Several weeks earlier the Food and Drug Administration had learned that two Texas Panhandle feedlots, with a capacity of over 70,000 head of cattle, were illegally implanting the ears of their animals with the synthetic estrogen diethylstilbestrol, or DES. After undergoing a long legal battle, the FDA had finally banned DES, a potent carcinogen, in July of 1979. FDA officials were angered by the flagrancy of the violations. But perhaps the whole brouhaha would have died down if it had ended with the two lots. However, by the time the Texas Beef Conference convened, the number of feedlots found to be still using DES implants had risen