Do Beef Organ Supplements Contain Toxins?

Whether or not beef organ supplements contain toxins is a question that comes up a lot with beef organ supplements, and especially with beef liver capsules. In this blog, we will discuss whether toxins are a problem in beef organ supplements, which toxins they might be, and how to avoid them.

Toxins In Beef Organ Supplements

First, it’s important to define what toxins are. Toxins are poisonous substances produced by living organisms, such as plants, animals, and bacteria, that can cause diseases, tissue damage, or illness when consumed or come into contact with, such as breathing them in or touching them. Commonly known toxins include Shiga toxin produced by E. coli, Salmonella, snake venom, and botulism.

What most people really mean when they say they are concerned about toxins in beef organ supplements is contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides (like glyphosate), and pathogenic bacteria.

What Are The Different Toxins In Beef Organ Supplements?

The main concerns, in terms of contaminants, in beef organ supplements, are:

• Heavy metals

  • Lead

  • Arsenic

  • Cadium

• Pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides

• Pathogens

  • Bacteria

  • Yeast

  • Fungi

  • Mold

• Adulterants

There are many beef organ supplements contaminated with these substances, so the concerns are valid. However, ensuring that beef organ supplements are free of contaminants is only part of making a high-quality product. A pill can be free of those contaminants, but still be a really bad product. 

The best way to know your beef organ supplement is both free of high levels of contaminants and a good product is to check out the Beef Organ Supplement Checklist and choose only brands that meet all the criteria.

Heavy Metals In Beef Organ Supplements

Heavy metals are a growing concern worldwide, so it's normal to worry about whether they are in your beef organ supplements.

One of the best ways to avoid heavy metal contamination is to ensure that the beef and beef organs used in the supplements are tested before they reach the facility.

That's why we recommend choosing beef organ supplements made from Australian beef organs. The Australian government conducts extensive testing on cattle each month to ensure meat and organs are safe for human consumption. Quality needs to begin at the farm, not when the organs reach the facility.

Check out our blog, Heavy Metals In Beef Organ Supplements, for a deep dive into the topic.

Do Beef Liver Supplements Contain Toxins?

One of the most common misconceptions about beef liver supplements is that you should not use them because the liver stores toxins. That’s not true. The liver filters out toxins but does not store them. It’s not a storage container; it’s more like a worker at a factory.

“The liver removes harmful substances from our body often by breaking them down to smaller byproducts. These byproducts leave the liver through bile or blood – byproducts in bile are removed from the body through feces while those in the blood are filtered out by the kidneys and removed through the urine.”

Toxins that are not removed are stored mainly in adipose tissue, not the liver. You can rest assured that high-quality beef liver supplements do not contain toxins that the cattle were trying to remove from their bodies.

Beef liver is one of the most nutrient-dense foods, not a storage facility for toxins.

Clean, Lab-Tested Beef Organ Supplements

Getting beef organ supplements that are free of high levels of contaminants is a great goal. Still, it’s important to understand that no food or supplement containing organs will return showing zero levels of heavy metals. Just as with foods like carrots, beets, greens, and brown rice, they do have small amounts of them. The key is not having high amounts. Your beef organ supplements tests for things like E. coli and Salmonella should come back at zero, though.

Making a clean beef organ supplement is about far more than just contaminant levels, though. 

It’s about:

• Where the cattle were raised

• How the cattle were raised

• What the cattle ate and how the food they ate was produced

• How soon after harvest the organs were processed

• How the organs were dried

• How the organs were milled

• Who made the products

• The facility they were made in

• And a whole lot more!

  • Check out the Beef Organ Supplement Checklist for the full breakdown of what goes into making the cleanest beef organ supplements.

Because a beef organ supplement with low levels of contaminants can:

• Be adulterated

• Be made from spent materials

• Be poorly dried and milled, leading to nutrient loss and fragile compound degradation

• Be made from cattle that had a bad diet

• Be made from cattle that were pumped full of antibiotics and hormones

• Contain unwanted additives that were not listed on the label

• Be made from cattle that polluted the local waterways and environment

• Be made from cattle that spent most of their life on a feedlot, even those labeled grass-fed

• Be made and produced by terrible people and awful corporations

It’s a dirty secret that most beef organ supplement companies don’t make anything. They don’t get the organs directly from the farmers; they don't make the raw materials; they don’t put them into capsules; and they don’t bottle them. This means when you buy nearly every brand of beef organ supplements, you don’t know who you’re buying from. They aren’t supplement companies; they’re marketing agencies. By offloading all the real work of making supplements, they can pump a massive amount of money into advertising and marketing. This arrangement helps to make these companies record profits, but it comes with significant downsides for the buyer. Do you really trust a company with no part in the process of actually making a beef organ supplement to do it properly?

We cannot emphasize enough that test results, including third-party testing, showing low levels of contaminants, do not mean it’s a good beef organ supplement.

Do NXGEN Wholefoods Beef Organ Supplements Contain Toxins?

NXGEN Wholefoods beef organ supplements are third-party tested in NATA-certified labs to ensure they are free of glyphosate, pathogenic bacteria, Salmonella, high levels of heavy metals, and more. However, that’s only a tiny fraction of what they do to ensure you get the best beef organ supplements.

Unlike most companies, which don’t make their own beef organ supplements, NXGEN Wholefoods makes its own products from start to finish and is setting the standard by which all beef organ supplements should be measured. They check off every box on the beef organ supplement checklist. They get the beef organs directly from a coop of regenerative family farmers in the Lake Eyre River Basin of Australia. The cows graze over vast areas, eating the native grasses. The areas are so large that helicopters are needed to monitor them. This region has never been cropped and sprayed with pesticides. The surrounding area is also free of cropping to ensure there is no spray drift or runoff into the area where the cows graze. Each lot is traceable back to the individual farms and cattle from which it comes. Once they receive the organs, they use a specialized freeze-drying process, followed by cryogenic milling, to prevent heat-induced damage from traditional milling. After that, they encapsulate and bottle the products. All of it is done in-house at their state-of-the-art TGA-certified (the Australian version of GMP) facility, purpose-built for the unique requirements of beef organ supplement manufacturing. NATA-accredited laboratories carry out third-party testing for pathogens and contaminants, including heavy metals. The only way to ensure a truly clean beef organ supplement is for a company to control the process from start to finish, because many contaminants won’t show up on test results, even third-party ones.

For a more in-depth look at what makes NXGEN Wholefoods different from other beef organ supplement brands, check out this blog.

The Cleanest Beef Organ Supplements

If you want the cleanest beef organ supplements, NXGEN Wholefoods is the obvious choice, because the best beef organ supplements can only be produced by a company that controls the entire process, from pasture to bottle.