Food Irradiation

What Is Food Irradiation?

Bombardment of a food, by ionizing radiation ("gamma rays"), from nuclear material, x-rays or high-speed electrons from electronic guns. They are used to kill bacteria in the food. Electrons are knocked off molecules and ricochet around in the food. They break up cell walls, slice and dice chromosomes, kill enzymes, and create free radicals (oxygen atoms missing an electron). These free radicals recombine to form stable compounds, or continue their destructive path. Some compounds are known to be cancer causing (formaldehyde, benzene, lipid peroxides). Others have never been seen or studied before. These new compounds are called Unique Radiolytic Products (URPs). Scientists have not studied long-term effects irradiated foods containing unknown amounts of URPs. Food irradiation is not the same as microwaving. Gamma rays, x-rays and electron beams carry more energy than microwaves. They also affect food differently. Food does not become radioactive unless there's equipment error or human error. Tiny amounts of radioactivity is created by electron-beam irradiation. They decay rapidly, but may cause problems if the food is eaten shortly after irradiation.

History

The idea of irradiating food is not new. We have had over 80 years of experimentation with it. The treatment was tested on strawberries in Sweden in 1916. The first patents on the idea were taken out in the United States in 1921, and in France in 1930. Little progress was made, however, until 1953, when President Eisenhower announced the "Atoms For Peace Program." Public attention was to be shifted away from nuclear weapons by the promotion of nuclear power and other uses of nuclear technology, so that the academic and industrial infrastructure could be developed, behind which, the weapons program would continue. There followed a decade of intensive research into food irradiation, funded and supervised by the United States Department of Defense. The first commercial use of food irradiation actually occurred in West Germany in 1957, for the sterilization of spices used in the manufacture of sausage. This was brought to an abrupt end when the German government banned the process in 1958, and for disinfestation of grain in 1959. Canada permitted its use for potatoes in 1960. The United States Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act of 1958, defined the irradiation process as an additive.

Only in 1963 was clearance given for sterilization of can-packed bacon and inhibition of potato sprouting and wheat disinfestation, already in use elsewhere. The FDA rescinded the bacon approval in 1968, citing possible health problems with the test animals and deficiencies in the way some experiments were designed and conducted. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations have collaborated on a joint initiative to research ad promote food irradiation since the early 1060s. These organizations have funded an International Food Irradiation Research Project at Karlsrube in West Germany since 1070, and a joint IAEA/WHO/FAO committee produced key reports on the wholesomeness of irradiated foods. At the same time, the Codex Alimentarius Committee of the United Nations (UN) has formulated International Guidelines on irradiated foods based on the recommendations of this joint committee. Irradiation companies have promoted the technology aggressively in the United States, and the Department of Energy (DOE) has financed irradiation plants and provided access to cheap sources of radioactive material as part of its nuclear waste management program.

Ionizing Radiation

Radiation is a household word that covers a wide spectrum of energy. At the low end of the spectrum are the emissions from power lines and visual display units. Higher up are radio waves and microwaves. Also included are infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light, and at the upper end are found x-rays, and gamma rays from radioactive material. When radiation strikes other material it transfers its energy. This energy transfer can cause heating, as with microwave cooking or lying in the sunshine. At a certain level, the radiation has sufficient energy to knock electrons out of the atoms of the material bombarded. This can break the molecular structure of the material, leaving positively and negatively charged particles called ions or free radicals. At or above this level, the radiation is called ionizing radiation. The ions are chemically very active and easily recombine or initiate chemical reactions with surrounding material. Thus, ionizing radiation alters the chemical structure of material, which, in turn, can have biological effects on the behavior of living organisms and the materials they feed on. Irradiation of living organisms, especially people, is almost always damaging. Bombarding any material with radiation can alter its chemical structure. The first stage of this process is the creation of free radicals, highly reactive parts of the original chemical structures that have been split and that carry either positive or negative charges. A free radical rapidly combines with another radical of opposite charge. In most cases, a completely new chemical is created.

The chemical agents responsible have not been identified, but some of the changes may be due to effects on the body's immune system. There is also a suggestion that nutrient reduction in irradiated foods is a cause of some of these health effects. Studies have found increased incidence of tumors, which suggests that cancers may be caused by long-term consumption of irradiated foods. A single carcinogenic insult is all that is needed to produce a malignant neoplasm a decade or more later. As early as 1979, a review of food irradiation literature by J. Barna for the Hungarian Academy of Sciences identified hundreds of adverse effects in animals relating to the feeding of irradiated food. Barna found 1,414 adverse effects, 185 beneficial effects, and 7,191 neutral effects. In studies of mice fed test diets from birth to death, both sexes showed significantly reduced survival for those fed gamma-irradiated food, and the group eating gamma-irradiated chicken had the highest incidence of several tumors among those analyzed. Fruit flies, which are commonly used to test for mutations, were fed test diets. The fruit flies fed gamma-irradiated chicken had seven times fewer offspring than those fed thermally-processed (cooked) chicken. Food irradiation proponents declared the results irrelevant, since fruit flies don't normally eat chicken.

The effects of irradiation are not limited to chemical changes in the food. Irradiation is also used to kill the yeast, mold, and bacteria that cause food to spoil. It will also render sterile any insects that infest it. Irradiation causes mutations in insects, and bacteria in food, leading to more resistant strains. Some strains of resistant salmonellae have been developed by repeated irradiation under laboratory conditions. Radiation-resistant bacteria have been found in environments with high natural or artificial radiation levels, and development of such resistance may be a problem around large irradiation plants. Although irradiation can kill bacteria in food, it will not remove the toxins (chemical poisons) that have been created by the bacteria at the earlier stages of contamination. It is the toxins created by bacterial contamination that are the real public health hazard. Not all the microorganisms in food are harmful. Some perform useful functions, particularly in warning us that food is going bad by giving off a putrid smell. Yeast, and mold also compete with harmful bacteria and so provide natural controls on their growth. If this natural balance is destroyed, the few remaining harmful bacteria can multiply rapidly without inhibition, and within a short time, the problem can be greater than before irradiation.

Increased production of aflatoxins following irradiation was first found in 1973 and confirmed in 1976 and 1978. Aflatoxins are powerful agents for causing liver cancer. Their production was found to be stimulated by irradiation at doses approved by the FAO/IAEA/WHO expert committee. Aflatoxins occur in damp environments on fungus spores on grains or vegetables. Control of humidity in storage becomes even more important in the case of irradiated than of non-irradiated foods. Irradiation of chicken could kill most of the salmonella bacteria on chicken flesh, and also kill most of the yeast and mold that are the natural competitors of clostridium botulinum--the bacterium that causes the much more serious food poisoning, botulism. It will also kill most of the organisms that cause the putrid odor when meat has gone bad. Yet, at the doses proposed, c. botulinum will not be killed. Under the right conditions, the organisms could multiply and become a health hazard without the consumers' having detected any warning odor.

Food Irradiation In the U.S. and Abroad

In the US, small amounts of meat, fruit and vegetables have been test-marketed in the last 15 years. For the past 7 years, Colorado Boxed Beef has been selling irradiated chicken for food service (e.g., restaurants, schools, airlines, hospitals) in the state of Florida. The irradiation is done at the nuclear-powered Mulberry, Florida facility. They will now sell irradiated beef. Major test-markets of irradiated ground beef and chicken will begin in April 2000 using electron-beam irradiators in Iowa and Arkansas (another is under construction in New Jersey), and the cobalt-60 plant in Florida. Wal-Mart will be the first retailer to "test the waters." In the US, Kraft, Tyson, Excel, Emmpak and IBP have also announced plans to sell irradiated foods. A company in Hawaii is planning to irradiate papayas for export beginning in June 2000. Food irradiation is permitted in more than 35 countries. In the US, it is approved for beef, pork, poultry, fruits, vegetables, wheat, wheat flour, teas and spices. In August 1999, a food industry coalition asked the FDA to also approve deli-meats, frozen foods, prepared fresh foods, fresh juices, seeds and sprouts. The FDA will almost certainly approve irradiation for these foods. Foods not yet requested for irradiation are: dairy (which is already pasteurized), eggs, seafood (because it may be contaminated with viruses, or bacteria that cause botulism and are not killed by current doses of irradiation), and a few foods like honey and coffee. Bacon was approved for irradiation in 1963. The approval was taken away in 1968 because animals fed irradiated bacon showed adverse health effects.

How Foods Are Affected By Irradiation

Some vitamins, like A, C, E, K and some B-complex vitamins, are damaged. From 5% up to 80%, depending on how long the food is stored. Some of these vitamins are natural anti-oxidants: that is, they destroy dangerous free radicals in the body. Irradiation both a) increases the amount of free radicals in a food, and b) damages the vitamins necessary to neutralize the free radicals! Free radicals are implicated in many diseases. Over 95% of bacteria in the food are killed: both bad bacteria, like E. coli, and good bacteria, like those with telltale odors that announce that the food has spoiled. Viruses (like the Norwalk virus in shellfish) and the bacteria that cause botulism are not killed. Irradiated raw foods that are purchased to be eaten raw are the most damaged. In addition to creating more free radicals, irradiation kills the important living enzymes that are vital for optimal digestion and metabolism. The bacteria-killing, enzyme-depletion and vitamin-depletion effects of irradiation are similar to cooking. Irradiated cooked fresh foods have even fewer nutrients than nonirradiated cooked foods.

Irradiation will not reduce the use of chemicals on food. It is applied after harvest. The effect of irradiation on complex chemicals such as pesticides in the food has not been studied. We don't know the long-term effect of a diet including irradiated pesticides. Aflatoxin, a highly carcinogenic substance produced by molds, is produced in greater quantities in irradiated food (because the bacteria that crowd it out have been killed). The bacterium that causes botulism is not killed by irradiation, but its natural enemies are. Food may be contaminated without any warning smell. This can be a big problem for meat that is irradiated in a sealed package. Irradiated food can be stored for longer periods of time. However, this benefits packers and retailers, rather than consumers.

How Irradiated Food Affects Humans

We don't know. There have been no long-term human studies, and almost no studies on children. The FDA based its approval of irradiation to treat food on only 5 animal studies of 441 studies submitted, and these 5 either showed health effects or had obvious scientific flaws. In fact, animal studies have shown many health effects, such as tumors, kidney failure, still birth, and miscarriages. Other studies from India showed that freshly irradiated wheat caused chromosomal changes in hamsters, monkeys and a small group of malnourished children. The changes did not occur in stored wheat. The Indian government decided not to irradiate wheat because of the difficulty in ensuring that wheat would be stored for at least 12 weeks. Adverse effects in these studies may be due to vitamin losses in irradiated foods, toxic chemicals created by the free radicals, or possibly to short-lived induced radioactivity in the food. We do know that irradiation can damage vitamins A, C, E, K, B₁, B₂, B₃, B₆ and folic acid, up to 80%, depending on the vitamin and how long the foods are stored. People who rely on fresh foods for their vitamins may suffer vitamin deficiencies.

It is ironic that the vitamins that are destroyed are those needed to fight the extra free radicals created by irradiation! Irradiation also damages or kills the living enzymes in raw foods. People who eat irradiated foods will be eating them in large quantities for a long period of time--possibly for life--especially if the FDA stops requiring labels. Scientists have no idea what result this will have on human health. Some foods may be irradiated twice, for example ground meat in a prepared frozen chili that is also irradiated. The effects on these foods on health have not been studied. The existing science on the safety of food irradiation is totally inadequate for the FDA to unleash this technology on the public. The FDA should require labels on the food so that people can avoid irradiated foods, and so that public health officials can determine if people who ate these foods and people who avoided them have different health problems. Without labels, epidemiologists will never be able to determine the health effects of irradiated foods in the diet.

The Electron-beam

Both kinds of irradiation damage the food in similar ways, and pose the same risks for human health. Nuclear irradiation uses radioactive cobalt-60 or cesium-137, which can release radioactivity in transport or plant accidents. Private companies rather than the government would own the nuclear materials. Safe disposal of all of the material is unlikely. Both nuclear and e-beam irradiation can cause serious injuries to workers in these facilities. E-beam irradiation may create very tiny amounts of radioactivity in the food, which might be a problem if irradiated foods are eaten in large quantities over long periods. If e-beam irradiation is widely used, as seems likely, eventually nuclear materials will also be used.

Why Is It Proposed For Use?

To kill bacteria that cause food poisoning and spoilage. In other words, primarily to protect food companies against expensive lawsuits and product recalls. For some products, to increase the time the food can be sold (shelf life). These sound like worthy goals until you ask, "what's causing the problem?" and "are there other solutions?" What's causing the problem? A variety of reasons (see Nicols Fox's book Spoiled) such as more food prepared away from home by uneducated food handlers, more imported foods from countries with lower sanitation standards, mass production slaughter techniques that allow cross-infection, etc. But the big problem, the one that galvanized the food industry to demand irradiation from Congress, is fecal contamination of meat and poultry that in turn leads to food poisoning. The dollar cost of lawsuits against fast food restaurants and the cost of recalling fecally contaminated food have just become too high. The food industry has been pushing irradiation to save the image of primarily meat products after massive contaminations by E. coli in ground meat, Salmonella in chickens, and Listeria in refrigerated deli meats. However, once irradiation facilities are built their owners will want to use them as much as possible.

Producers of fruits, vegetables, prepared fresh foods, juices, and other foods will irradiate to prolong shelf life and to shield themselves from liability, no matter how remote the likelihood of food poisoning. The costs will be passed on to the consumer, for example 3-6 cents/pound for ground beef. Without labels, the consumer will never know if their live foods are dead. If labeling is not required, irradiated foods will soon be as common and unavoidable as genetically engineered foods are now. Irradiation advocates say that irradiation does not create a sterile product, and all food safety procedures need to be observed anyway. Therefore, irradiation protects the producers more than the consumers! Are there other solutions? Many small changes can make a difference, because food safety can be affected anywhere from farm to table. The single most important change would be to remove the meat inspection functions from the USDA.

Who Supports/Opposes Irradiation?

Since Hudson Foods' August 2001 announcement that it was recalling 25 million pounds of hamburger meat due to E. coli contamination, the U.S. media has gone out of its way to promote food irradiation as a "solution" to this growing problem. The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, National Public Radio and all of the television news programs have run primarily pro-food irradiation pieces that all seem to go like this: "the food supply is contaminated; there is a 'quick and easy' technology called food irradiation that will magically solve the problem; anyone with extra initials after their name endorses its safety; and the only things holding back its widespread use is a public that fails to understand science and technology and a tenacious group calling itself Food & Water." The coverage has been propagandistic and shallow, reducing a complex nuclear issue down to dueling sound-bytes: "it's going to kill you" or "it's going to save you."

The public health official's job is to improve the public health statistics now; public health advocates of irradiation are not looking at the long-term health, environmental and political consequences. The food industry producers and marketers want to sell food and avoid lawsuits now; they are not looking at the long-term consequences. The Department of Defense wants to get rid of some of its nuclear wastes by selling them to private businesses; they are not looking at the long-term consequences. Grassroots opponents are supported by a growing number of scientists, doctors, and epidemiologists who advocate the precautionary principle. Irradiation has not been proven safe, and the political and environmental results on our food system is undesirable. Unlike irradiation advocates, almost none of us are paid to advocate our point of view.

Labeling Of Irradiated Food

Labels are blocking food industry attempts to irradiate our food supply whenever and wherever they want. At present, labels are required. But they do not have to be larger than the typeface used for the ingredients. The irradiationists know that most people (over 75%) don't want to buy or eat irradiated food. Therefore, they told their friends in Congress to require the FDA to revise the labels. At present (April 2000), the FDA is preparing a draft of its new policy. It will ask for public comments in Spring or Summer 2000. Then it will rewrite and publish the policy. One possibility is that the FDA will remove the current requirement for labels. If that happens, there will be no turning back, because the health effects of a diet of irradiated food will be impossible to track. Irradiation-sensitive labels can be used on packages to prove a packaged food has been irradiated, but there is no way yet to analyze the food itself to determine if it has been irradiated, or at what dosage, or how many times. All irradiated food should be labeled, for these reasons: a) The existing science on safety is inadequate, therefore people should be able to make their own decision on whether or not to buy irradiated foods. b) Irradiation-caused vitamin loss should be disclosed.

Why Does The Food Have To Be Irradiated?

That's the big question that nobody wants you to ask. The answer is fecal contamination. Animal feces primarily cause food poisoning from meat and poultry. (Chickens are frequently contaminated with salmonella or campylobacter when raised in giant confinement buildings, which is the current practice). The question to ask the food producers is: Why are the feces getting into the food? It's true that food is never sterile. But there's a difference between dirt and feces. We expect food to be contaminated with dirt, dust, tiny stones, insect fragments, etc. These are unavoidable, and can be washed off. But we don't expect food to be produced in such a way that it is routinely contaminated with feces, or salmonella or campylobacter. Irradiation allows food producers to continue current production methods and then "clean up" the contaminated products with irradiation. See the recent book Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry by Gail Eisnitz an inside tour of the places where our meat and poultry are slaughtered.

The "Science" Of Food Irradiation

The "science" on human health effects is inadequate to prove irradiation is safe. The FDA used only 5 studies of 441 submitted, and these all have obvious methodological flaws or showed health effects in the animals. There have been almost no studies on children, and no studies on humans longer than 15 weeks. This is totally inadequate to unleash irradiation on the public. The key point is that food irradiation and labeling are not questions that can be fully solved by the science of irradiation's effect on human health of the year 2000. First, science changes. Second, food irradiation and labeling are matters of public policy, not science. Science is merely the handmaiden of public policy. The use of food irradiation should be supported or opposed based on a variety of public-policy factors.

Environmental Effects Of Irradiating Food

If nuclear materials are used, radioactivity may be released in plant accidents and transport. The record is not reassuring. In the US alone, many nuclear accidents have already occurred at food irradiating plants. For example, a cesium-137 spill in Georgia cost the taxpayers about $47 million to clean up. Because private companies will own the nuclear materials, they will have a financial incentive to dump these materials without paying the regulatory fees. This has already occurred numerous times with existing irradiation plants. Nuclear irradiators can by law release small amounts of radioactivity into the environment. Whether or not this is dangerous probably cannot be proven. However, we are already exposed to increased radioactivity from atomic weapons testing fallout and nuclear plant releases. Any additions are unwise. Electron-beam facilities do not have environmental effects except for consuming large amounts of electricity. However, both nuclear and electronic high-energy beams can injure or kill exposed workers. Irradiation gives our environmentally unsustainable system of meat and poultry production a new lease on life. Eventually, the few bacteria that survive irradiation will multiply and work their way back into the food chain. When that happens, irradiation doses will have to be increased, damaging the foods in new and untested ways.

Socio-economic and Global Issues

E-beam and x-ray facilities are cheaper to operate than nuclear facilities and do not carry the dangers or stigma of using nuclear material. Therefore, they are being used first. However, once irradiation is established, hundreds or thousands of irradiation facilities will be built. Nuclear material will be privatized and used, both cobalt-60 and cesium-137. The Department of Energy may reopen a breeder reactor in Hanford, Washington, partly for food irradiation. Cobalt-60 is manufactured in nuclear reactors from cobalt-59. There is not enough for widespread use. In countries with expensive or unreliable electricity, it is likely that cesium-137 will be used. It is a by-product of nuclear power production. Therefore, in the big picture, any widespread use of irradiation encourages the continued use of nuclear power. Radiation-resistant food bacteria like E. coli may emerge because some food bacteria survive irradiation, and another species of radiation-resistant bacteria already exists. Gene transfer between food bacteria and the resistant bacteria is quite possible in the long term. Irradiation is a capital-intensive process that requires large amounts of food to be processed in centralized facilities. The use of irradiation speeds up the centralization of our food system. Because Third World people tend to depend on very few staples, irradiating just one of these staples means that a large percentage of their diet will be irradiated for years and years. The potential harmful effects of a diet of irradiated food will be magnified. If irradiation becomes widespread, plants will be genetically engineered so that their food products will have better taste, smell and texture after irradiation, even if the nutritional content decreases. It is possible that some of these new plants will be patented to need irradiation.

Irradiation In Other Countries

It is legal in at least 35 countries, for example Russia (cereals), South Africa (fruit and vegetables), Belgium (spices and food ingredients), France (spices, mechanically deboned poultry meat), The Netherlands (spices, frozen fish and seafood), Hungary (onions and paprika), Norway (spices), Canada (seafood and pork), China (potatoes). Other foods may be irradiated also. Food irradiation has been used illegally to camouflage spoiled seafood for resale. There are anti-irradiation groups in several countries, including New Zealand and Japan, and European activists are closely watching the FDA policy on labeling. Because of world trade regulations, if the FDA stops requiring labels, the US will be able to force other countries to accept irradiated foods without labels, even if the other country requires labels for its own foods.

Strategies To Convince The Public

a) They use misleading terms such as "electronic pasteurization," "pasteurization with x-rays" and "cold pasteurization." Pasteurization is known to the public as a process of killing microorganisms in milk and other liquids by heating them briefly to a specified temperature. The connotations of "pasteurization" and "irradiation" are quite different, because we associate pasteurization with milk, a "friendly" and "benevolent" food. The use of "pasteurization" to mean "irradiation" is therefore misleading. First and most important, pasteurized dairy is the standard. Most American consumers cannot buy unpasteurized dairy products. We do not notice the word "pasteurized" because it is the status quo. Irradiation, on the other hand, is a new technology that is NOT the status quo. Using the term "pasteurized" gives irradiation an aura of stability, permanence and even friendliness. Some dictionaries list irradiation as a secondary meaning for "pasteurization"; however, calling irradiated food "pasteurized" is like calling a person with second-degree burns "sun-tanned." Irradiated and pasteurized dairy foods are affected differently. Unlike dairy pasteurization, irradiation does not heat the food significantly, and may last as long as several hours. Dairy pasteurization kills bacteria when the heated water ruptures the bacteria's cell walls. Irradiation kills bacteria because free radicals bounce around in the food and penetrate the bacteria's cell walls. The free radicals may remain to do more damage to other cells in the food.

Public policy should be based on precaution rather than only what can be proved by existing science. No one knows the long-term effects. Second, the existing science does not prove that irradiation is harmless and in fact suggests it is harmful.

Making A Difference

Look at it from a holistic perspective: People who support food irradiation are trying to solve a problem caused by the status quo without changing the status quo. They accept factory farming and meat industry deregulation, with the resulting sanitation problems. They are trying to put a band-aid on a problem rather than solving the problem. They want to restrict the debate over food irradiation to the narrow question "Is there any science that proves that it harms human health?" They don't want to look at the big picture, including the possibility of long-term effects on human health and the need to test the effects, the consequences for other countries' labeling laws, the support irradiation gives to factory farming, etc. Opponents of irradiation, on the other hand, are looking at the big picture. They don't accept the status quo of meat industry deregulation, and they want the contamination problem solved at the source. They want alternative techniques for food safety to be used. They want to reverse the policies of the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations that deregulated meat inspection and led to dirtier meat. They want more environmentally sustainable and humane food production methods, better food inspection, and more locally grown food. These goals are blocked if food irradiation is used to keep the status quo. They want government to presume that irradiation is unsafe unless proved otherwise (the precautionary principle). They want labels so they can know what they are purchasing. They do not want to encourage privatization of nuclear materials. Unlike supporters of irradiation, opponents feel responsible for protecting human health and the environment for everyone, including future generations.

Irradiation Damages The Quality Of Food

Irradiation damages food by breaking up molecules and releasing pieces of the molecules, called free radicals. They bounce around in the food, damage vitamins and enzymes, and form new chemicals, some of which are toxic. Irradiated foods can lose 5%-80% of many vitamins (A, C, E, K and B-complex). The amount of loss depends on the dose of irradiation and the length of storage time. Irradiation inactivates the natural digestive enzymes found in raw foods. This means the body has to work harder to digest them. If unlabeled, raw foods that have been irradiated look like fresh foods, but they do not have the full complement of vitamins and enzymes. Irradiated fats tend to become rancid. New chemicals, called unique radiolytic products (URPs), are created when the free radicals combine with existing chemicals (e.g., pesticides) in the food. Some of these URPs are known toxins (benzene, formaldehyde, lipid peroxides) and some are unique to irradiated foods. Scientists have not studied the long-term effect of these new chemicals in our diet.

When electron beams are used, trace amounts of radioactivity may be created in the food. Science has not proved that a long-term diet of irradiated foods is safe for human health The longest human feeding study was 15 weeks. No one knows the long-term effects of a lifetime diet that includes foods that will be frequently irradiated, such as meat, chicken, vegetables, fruits, salads, sprouts and juices. There are no studies on the effects of feeding babies or children diets containing irradiated foods, except a small study from India. In that study, young children fed freshly irradiated wheat suffered chromosomal damage. Studies on animals fed irradiated foods have shown increased tumors, reproductive failures and kidney damage. These effects may be due to irradiation-induced vitamin deficiencies, to the inactivity of enzymes in the food, or to toxic radiolytic products in the food. The FDA based its approval of irradiation on only 5 of 441 animal-feeding studies. Marcia van Gemert, Ph.D., the toxicologist who chaired the FDA committee that approved irradiation, later said, "These studies reviewed in the 1982 literature from the FDA were not adequate by 1982 standards, and are even less accurate by 1993 standards to evaluate the safety of any product, especially a food product such as irradiated food." The 5 studies are not a good basis for approval of irradiation for humans, because they showed health effects on the animals or were conducted using lower energies of irradiation than commercial irradiators. Science is always changing. The science of today is not the science of tomorrow. The science we have today is totally inadequate to prove the long-term safety of food irradiation.

Irradiation Is An Environmental Hazard

If irradiation is widely used, nuclear materials will be "privatized". The owners of nuclear irradiators will have the responsibility of "safely" disposing of the radioactive material. The more nuclear irradiators, the more likelihood of a serious accident in transport, operation or disposal of the nuclear materials. Food irradiation facilities have already contaminated the environment. For example, in Georgia in 1988, radioactive water escaped from an irradiation facility. The taxpayers were stuck with $47 million in cleanup costs.

The decision to use irradiation is a matter of public policy, not science. Therefore, the public should be involved--not just the scientists. Irradiation gives the factory farming system of meat production a new lease on life. Many people question if factory farming is the best way to raise meat and poultry. Irradiation is a technology that is used after the food is produced. We should ask, why does the method of production yield a food that "needs" irradiation so it doesn't kill people? Because of deregulation, the meat and poultry industry have recently suffered economically from food-poisoning lawsuits and expensive product recalls. One solution is to slow down slaughter lines and increase the number of inspectors, instead, they prefer irradiation, which is applied after the animals is killed and packaged. Children already think food grows in packages. By creating "two-month tomatoes" and "million x-ray hamburger", irradiation divorces us from the source of our food.

Irradiation's False Promises

The call for food irradiation indicates we have a serious problem with food safety in this country, particularly regarding our meat and poultry supply. But food irradiation is not the cure its advocates want us to believe it is. Rather, it will allow the causes of meat contamination to flourish, while giving the false appearance that the problem is being solved. Instead of being forced to clean up inhumane, filthy, and sloppy processing facilities, corporations can continue the practices that lead to contamination, and simply irradiate the fecal contaminated meat products that should have been discarded in the first place. But purveyors of high technology gimmicks like food irradiation never like to look to prevention since it gets in the way of business. Instead, they focus on the symptoms, and do a fine job getting our complacent media and easy-to-buy legislators to do the same.

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