back to Organic Consumers Assn. Stop Food Irradiation page

Updated April 28, 2001

Food Irradiation: Unusual FAQ

1. Where do you get your information?

2. Where do the documents on this site come from?

3. Are your documents based on fact or opinion?

4. Why don't you give more emphasis to the nuclear issue?

5. Can someone detect if an unlabeled food has been irradiated?

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1. Where do you get your information?

These are the main sources. #2 and #3 are the most important for background:

1. News stories about irradiation-related topics posted on the internet (these go into the news archive).
2. Previous work done by anti-irradiation groups, especially a group in Hawaii that fought a nuclear irradiator there. They produced several detailed pamphlets for the layperson about the science and history of irradiation. This information (with #3) are the basis for background documents on the OCA site. Irradiation-Free Food Hawaii is now inactive.
3. Food & Water in Vermont 'carried the torch' for over 10 years as the only major national organization fighting irradiation. They also have produced several thorough booklets on irradiation, available by mail. They have moved on to other issues now.
4. Documents provided by an activist who has been involved in the anti-irradiation movement for the last 15 years, from her trip to several international food conferences (one of these is the British advisory commission report on induced radioactivity in food, another is a critique of the Indian studies).
5. Documents provided by other activists who participated in the mid-80's push to ban nuclear irradiation (example: the calculation of URPs in fruit)
6. Public Citizen is actively working to stop irradiation, and they produce documents of interest.
7. The webmaster's judgment as to what peripheral information would be of interest to readers, such as sites about the meat industry, factory farming and the government meat inspectors union. This page makes an argument, and editorial judgment must be used to decide what to include.

There is a fair amount of repetition in the basic factual information presented in different documents, because no one will read everything.

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2. Where do your documents come from?

Most of the documents on the site are based on news stories in major media. However, we usually find the stories second-hand: e-mail newsletters that focus on GE, food or agricultural issues, visits to other websites that post information on these kinds of issues, sometimes communications sent to us by individuals, etc. A lot of the site was written by OCA people. A document like "Ten reasons GE foods will not feed the world" or "What's wrong with food irradiation" is obviously our opinion. You can judge for yourself if the argument is persuasive: it won't be persuasive unless we can support our argument with facts.

On the irradiation home page and on some of the subsidiary pages, there are comments in red. These are comments intended to show the reader why I chose to post that document. I am very scrupulous and I do not post anything from a questionable source.

Obviously, we are selective; we don't post everything. Just like the other side, we are constructing an argument.

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3. Are your documents based on fact or opinion?

Don't fall into the trap of saying that "if it isn't proved by science, it doesn't exist." Unlike our opponents, we are very concerned about the economic and social effects of these new technologies, and these effects play a large part in our stance. Their position is, "it's not harmful unless science shows it to be harmful." (But then they don't do any long-term tests. Of course then they can say their tests haven't shown any harm.) We say "science is always provisional. The science of today is not enough to show safety. Therefore, we want a
moratorium on these technologies." Our basic premises are different.

Because the media almost never covers the social and economic impact of
these technologies and treats them only as human-health issues (and
occasionally business stories), we devote a lot of effort to pointing out the larger picture such as effects on world trade, the environment, etc. You could call documents dealing with social and economic impact of a policy "opinion" but that doesn't mean they are less valuable than what is proven by science. We need to project the social and economic effects of policies because science is value-neutral and can NEVER be a guide for public policy. Ethical decisions about "what is good" and who it is good for are essential. We contribute to that debate.

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4. Why don't you give more emphasis to the nuclear issue?

Several nuclear-powered facilities in the US are operating or under construction for food irradiation.* However, most of the irradiation we will see in the near future in the U.S. will be done using electron beams, to "open the door" for irradiation and neutralize people's fears about nuclear irraidation. The only environmental effect of e-beam irradiation is the need for production of more electric power.

However, if e-beam irradiation is accepted by the consumer for ground beef, then nuclear irradiation will be widely used internationally. Why? Several reasons: a) the source of irradiation is not listed on the label (where labels are required), b) e-beam irradiation is only usable for small, evenly shaped foods like beef patties or papayas (bulky items, like medical supplies or boxes of fruits, must be irradiated using x-rays or nuclear materials), and c) other countries without cheap and reliable sources of electricity will use nuclear materials. However, this argument requires that people look several steps into the future, which is why we don't stress it.

*Operating: Mulberry, FL. Under construction: Schaumburg, IL.

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5. Can someone detect if an unlabeled food has been irradiated?

To confirm irradiation, the industry plans to use radiation-sensitive labels.

Current methods of detection of irradiation use URPs (unique radiolytic products--new chemicals created by irradiation) rather than induced radioactivity. Because the URPs vary by food and dose, these are useful only to check whether an unlabeled particular food has been irradiated or not.

(Obviously, this kind of test is not available to the consumer--so the answer is that the consumer cannot detect if unlabeled food has been irradiated. Abnormally extended shelf life--a tomato that never ripens after two months, a strawberry that doesn't rot after a month--suggest irradiation but don't prove it.)

(Induced radioactivity is not a good measure because foods vary in their naturally occurring radioactivity and also in the radioactivity acquired by uptake of radioactive materials--for example, meat from animals that graze near the Chernobyl nuclear accident site.)

An example of a study showing URPs:
(Choi and Hwang, Detection of hydrocarbons in irradiated and roasted
sesame seeds, JAOCS [Journal of American Oil Chemists Society] 1997; 64:469-472)

One objective of this study was to determine if the presence of hydrocarbons known to be created by gamma irradiation could be used to determine if sesame seed had been irradiated. They irradiated unroasted sesame seeds at 0, .05, .1, .5, 1, 5 and 10 kGray and found that the radiolytic hydrocarbons 16:2, 16:3, 17:1, and 17:2 can be used as markers of irradiation at 0.5 kGray or higher. Table 1 shows the levels of radiolytic hydrocarbons in seeds irradiated at 1 kGray and above are approximately six to eight times higher, overall, than other hydrocarbons. They used lipid extraction by hexane, Florisil column chromatography and gas chromatography.

A British Government report on irradiation mentions "A URP which has been clearly identified is 6-deoxy-D-threo-2,5-hexodiulose which is formed when
crystalline beta-D-fructose is irradiated."