Pregnancy and beef?

This is ridiculous. How many possible sources of bias are there in this study? Looking at the diets of women when they were pregnant long enough ago that they are now grandmothers!?!? And assuming that the current levels of hormones in beef were present then. And that no other possible sources of anything that would affect development might have been present. And that the women even remember accurately how much beef they ate. Bad epi!

Study links beef-eating moms to sons with low sperm counts; AMI objects

By Ann Bagel Storck on 3/28/2007 for Meatingplace.com

Men whose mothers ate a lot of beef during pregnancy are more likely to have low sperm counts and fertility problems, according to a report in the journal Human Reproduction. Dr. Shanna H. Swan of the University of Rochester Medical Center, the report's author, identified anabolic steroids used to fatten cattle, pesticides and other environmental contaminants as possible causes of the problems. Swan and her colleagues studied 387 partners of pregnant women in five U.S. cities. Each man provided a sperm sample, and his mother completed a questionnaire about what she ate during her pregnancy. On average, the mothers reported eating beef about 4.5 times weekly and other meats less frequently. For women who ate beef at least seven times a week, the son's sperm averaged 24.3 percent below normal. Although those sons did produce a pregnancy, they were three times as likely to have consulted a fertility doctor. AMI's criticism The American Meat Institute advised that the study be viewed with "a giant dose of skepticism." Its most glaring fault, AMI said, was its "purely speculative conclusion" that chemical components in the beef were linked to the fertility problems. "The study does not include any laboratory analysis of the compounds suggested to be contained in beef, much less the beef that may have been consumed by the mothers decades ago," said Randy Huffman, AMI Foundation vice president of scientific affairs. AMI also criticized the validity of women "of advanced age" recalling what they ate decades ago. Swan conceded that women may have difficulty remembering their diets after such a passage of time, but added, "When you are pregnant, you are very aware of what you eat." Swan also emphasized that the study needs to be confirmed, and it is too soon to recommend that pregnant women avoid eating beef.