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FOOD IRRADIATION IS A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL

[Slightly revised from a piece that appeared in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Star Tribune, Sunday, February 4, 2001, as "You want cesium with that?"]

By John M. LaForge

The recent recall of one million pounds of E. coli-contaminated ground beef and 16.7 million pounds of chicken and turkey products has generated an industry-sponsored chant for meat irradiation in the Middle West. But irradiation is a deal with the devil. The fact that nothing is known about a childhood or long-term diet of irradiated food makes the practice tantamount to human experimentation. With scores of people made sick locally, industrialists who stand to make millions from irradiation are turning concern for the victims of bad meat into a rush for profits.

Irradiation will not eliminate E. coli from the meat supply or halt the spread of food-borne disease, since E. coli is often introduced locally -- after irradiation. This is because local supermarkets regularly mix their meat scraps with ground beef from meat packers. The meat industry can use cheaper, conventional methods of killing pathogens such as better hygiene, safe chemical rinses, hot water and steam vacuums. Steam pasteurization at 185 degrees eliminates E. coli and is the normal practice at most meat packers.

In approving irradiation, the FDA reviewed 441 short-term toxicity studies. Dr. Marcia van Gemert, who was in charge of the review, testified that all 441 reports were flawed. In fact the FDA now says only six were "properly conducted, fully adequate by 1980 standards, and able to stand alone in support of safety."(1) One of the six showed a statistically significant increase in stillbirths among rats fed irradiated wheat.(2) The study used irradiation levels well below those proposed for human food. Public Citizen, the consumer group in Washington, concludes in an Oct. 2000 report that "the FDA legalized -- and continues to legalize -- food irradiation without testing it for safety."(3)

Today's irradiators, using radioactive cesium or cobalt or electron beam linear accelerators, expose food to the equivalent of between 30 million and 150 million chest X-rays. Some of the foods now approved for irradiation are beef, pork, poultry, nuts, potatoes, wheat, wheat flour, fruits and vegetables, tea and 60 dried herbs and spices.

As if irradiation doesn't have a past, its proponents say, "It's safe ... with no reported cases of harm to humans or test animals."(4) This is not true, as the FDA's own rat studies prove. Indeed, rradiation has already had it own Three Mile Island.

Outside Atlanta, Georgia, Radiation Sterilizers, Inc. (RSI) got 252 canisters of cesium-137 from the Energy Dept. and in 1988 began irradiating spices. Within two years, a capsule began leaking cesium into RSI's storage pool. While workers took the carcinogen home on contaminated clothing, it took federal officials six months to find the leak's source. In 1992, the contaminated building was abandoned.(5)

Any widespread use of cesium-137 and cobalt-60 will further compound deadly radioactive contamination with inevitable accidents along highways and railways, inside irradiation facilities and in surrounding communities.

The origin of cobalt-60 and cesium-137 is rarely mentioned in glowing reports of irradiation's benefits: cesium-137 is a radioactive waste left in huge quantities from nuclear weapons programs, and cobalt-60 is manufactured in nuclear reactors. Cesium-137 is extremely hazardous, deadly for 300 years, water-soluble and very expensive to store. The FDA's Jim Greene said in 1986 that using cesium-137 for irradiation, "could substantially reduce the cost of disposing of nuclear waste."(6) In 1983 the Energy Dept. told the House Armed Services Committee, "The utilization of these radioactive materials simply reduces our waste handling problem. we get some of these very hot elements like cesium and strontium out of the waste."(7)

The FDA says irradiation doesn't change food's nutritional content, but it destroys vitamins A, B, B-12, C, E, and K, and it creates new chemicals in meat known as "radiolytic products," some of which are known carcinogens -- like benzene and formaldehyde. Dozens of "unique radiolytic products" or URPs are completely unknown and as such haven't been identified or tested for toxicity. The government granted these irradiation-induced chemicals a blanket exemption from safety testing -- deciding that they didn't qualify as "food additives."

While industry claims that irradiation doesn't change the flavor or aroma of meat, taste testers disagree. New York Times food writer Marian Burrows found, "In a side-by-side test, all the irradiated meat smelled funny, especially the ground beef. A slight barnyard odor escaped from the package, like steamed cow."(8)

At a Nov. 27 meeting of the Sauk Rapids, MN City Council, officials from Huisken Meats of Chandler, MN and Titan Corp. of San Diego were on hand to counter public opposition to their plan for a meat irradiator across from the local high school. Opponents, organized in Minnesota COACT and Minn. Safe Food Link, warned that irradiation can't eliminate E. coli and pointed to the shortage and weakness of safety studies, but the Council approved industrial bonding for the project.

Titan's "SureBeam" electron linear accelerator (e-beam) irradiator was described as "safe and effective." But e-beams cause the same food safety problems as cesium and cobalt -- the loss of vitamins, nutrients, and the introduction of radiolytic products and carcinogens. Furthermore, e-beams -- unlike the cesium-137 irradiators -- cause activation of trace minerals in the meat, contaminating the meat with radioactivity. Even the pro-irradiation Council for Agriculture, Science and Technology (CAST) acknowledges this Achilles heel of e-beams. CAST says in its food irradiation report, "The increased . risk of cancer from the induced radioactivity caused by treating meat with accelerated electrons thus is negligible."(9) Are you reassured?

For Better Sales, Hide the Label

Labels are required on bulk packages of irradiated food, but consumers are wary, and poor test-market sales have kept irradiated food out of most stores. Enter industry pressure, which moved Congress to minimize the label requirement -- from a prominent "Treated With Radiation" warning on the front, to a tiny ingredient list-size notice on the back. However, no labeling of irradiated ingredients is required, so canned soup made with irradiated potatoes, onions and spices need not be so labeled. Likewise, food caterers, hospitals, schools, restaurants, retirement homes and childcare centers are not required to inform their clients that foods they serve were irradiated.(10)

Stamps of approval from the FDA and USDA shouldn't ease healthy pubic skepticism -- not after 80 deaths were attributed to Propulsid, and another 63 to Rzulin -- both FDA approved, then banned. Consumers will be better off demanding tougher regulation of meat packers and handlers, rather than submitting to the nuclear industry's latest radiation experiment.
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John M. LaForge, is on the staff of Nukewatch, a Wisconsin-based public interest group, and editor of its newsletter, the Pathfinder. His articles on nuclear weapons, power and waste have appeared in The Progressive, Z Magazine, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, Sociological Imagination and elsewhere.

NOTES
1. Michael Colby, Food Irradiation, 2d Edition, 2000, from Food & Water, Inc., Walden, VT, p. 7; Worth, Hauter & Epstein, "A Broken Record: How the FDA Legalized - and Continues to Legalize - Food Irradiation Without Testing It for Safety," from Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy & Environment Program, The Cancer Prevention Coalition, and Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, October 2000.
2. Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Anumukti Journal, India, Vol. 8, No. 6, June/July 1995.
3. Worth, Hauter & Epstein, "A Broken Record: How the FDA Legalized - and Continues to Legalize - Food Irradiation Without Testing It for Safety," October 2000, from Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy & Environment Program, The Cancer Prevention Coalition, and Global Resource Action Center for the Environment, p. 8.
4. St. Paul Pioneer Press, December 3, 1997.
5. Michael Colby, "Food Irradiation's Nuclear Nightmares," Food & Water Journal, Spring, 1998, p. 25.
6. Grand Forks Herald, April 28, 1986.
7. Michael Colby, Food Irradiation, 2d Edition, 2000, from Food & Water, Inc., Walden, VT; p. 10.
8. New York Times, Dec. 10, 1997.
9. Michael Colby, Food Irradiation, 2d edition, 2000, from Food & Water, Inc., Walden, VT, p. 23
10. Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 16, 1999.
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