Experts debunk beef-eating sperm claim

Claims that a mother's beef consumption can damage her son's sperm count and quality should not cause alarm in Australia, experts say.

Australian male reproductive health specialists have spoken out against controversial findings in a US study which link meat-eating in pregnancy to fertility.

The research, published in the journal Human Reproduction, found that women who eat a lot of beef while pregnant give birth to sons who grow up to have poor sperm quality.

Tests on 387 fertile men who recently fathered a child showed the count was 24 per cent lower in those men whose mothers ate more then seven meals of beef a week when pregnant.

"The average sperm concentration of the men in our study went down as their mothers' beef intake went up," researchers from New York's University of Rochester Medical Centre wrote.

The team speculated that pesticides, hormones or contaminants added to cattle feed to improve growth may be to blame, but this had yet to be proven.

Professor Rob McLachlan, director of Andrology Australia, said another larger US study of much larger doses of female sex hormones found no damaging effect on male fertility.

In any case, such concerns may not be relevant to Australia as beef is produced differently here, Prof McLachlan said.

"In Australia and Europe, the use of similar hormones in the cattle industry was banned decades ago," he said.

"We also have stringent detection methods, so the current use of such hormones in Australia is highly unlikely."

The findings have reignited debate about the role of the environment in reproductive health and general well-being.

Previous studies have shown that exposure to pesticides and industrial chemicals can have an adverse effect on male reproduction, leading to testicular problems such as undescended testes and testicular damage.

"This is certainly an area where further research is needed to determine more accurately the actual risks to men," Prof McLachlan said.