Am I allergic to corn?

Is it dangerous to eat corn-fed meats if you are allergic to corn?

• For instance, most chickens are probably fed corn. I thought I read on an allergy site once about this that it might be unsafe for a person with corn allergy. Anyone know or have experience? Thanks

• Answer:

  It depends on how sensitive you are. There is no danger about corn IN the actual meat, because that's just not happening. The corn is being broken down into component parts that are no longer corn proteins and utilized within the muscle tissue, so not a problem. However, if corn is fed to the animal (especially poultry), when it is being butchered, there can be corn contamination of the meat due to undigested corn in the intestinal tract/stomach opening up. In poultry, this can coat the skin due to how the defeathering process works.This cannot be completely cleaned off the meat. There are anti-bacterial cleaning solutions used on the flesh after evisceration, but these destroy bacteria, not allergenic proteins. So you can have some contamination left over. It is also on the animal's fur, the skin, the feathers, and as such it is going to be present in the butchering facility, which is a potential contamination risk, again. A blade cutting through contaminated skin can carry that contamination into the flesh just a little. However, this would not be likely to bother someone who is not severely allergic. And if one WAS severely allergic, usually you need to look out for meat that has lactic or citric acid washes as one of the anti-bacterial washes, because these are usually derived or processed with corn, and they penetrate the first few layers of skin, so they cannot be washed off. Also, some meats add undeclared cornstarch to the inside of plastic packaging to prevent it sticking to the meat. I have only seen this in meat completely wrapped in plastic, not the meat in styrofoam trays.