Currently, beef producers are allowed to treat meat cattle with six hormones in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but not in Europe. Hormone treatments were outlawed in the European Economic Community in 1989 in response to well-publicized abuses; a few Italian veal producers injected their calves with large quantities of the banned steroid DES, which ended up in bottled baby food and caused changes in the sexual organs of some infants. Laboratory studies indicate that meat from animals treated with allowed hormone levels contains only minute hormone residues, and that these residues are harmless when ingested by humans.