Irradiation

Irradiation

by Mark Dunau

Irradiated food is food that is processed through a multimillion-dollar nuclear facility where it is exposed to radioactive material, either cobalt 60 or cesium 137. The standard dose of radiation (gamma rays) used is equivalent to 4,000,000 chest x-rays. The food does not become radioactive, but it does change. Some vitamins and enzymes may be destroyed, and new chemicals are produced in the food, including benzene, a known carcinogen, and formaldehyde, a possible carcinogen. There are no long-term studies of the effects on humans of an irradiated food diet.

The purpose of irradiating food is to make potentially unsanitary food safe by killing the bacteria in it. The industry term for food irradiation is "cold pasteurization." Irradiation, however, does not kill all bacteria in food—the strong survive. If these surviving bacteria behave anything like those that arose from natural selection due to the use of antibiotics in livestock feed over the last 50 years, the effects could be unfortunate for Americans.

The force behind this technology is not concern for public health, but corporate greed. Seventy-five percent of the U.S. beef supply is now controlled by three corporations. As agriculture has become increasingly dominated by union-busting agribusiness and union-busting meat packers, the nation’s food supply has grown more tainted by unsanitary and unsafe environments that spread bacterial disease through fecal contamination. The beef and poultry industries, in particular, are trying to cope not only with old bacterial pathogens, but with new and more virulent bacterial strains (Salmonella enteritidis, Campylobacter, Escherichia coli O157:H7). These pathogens have spread, multiplied, and become a threat to public health through factory processing and the industrialization of livestock and poultry farms. At the same time, the number of U.S. Department of Agriculture meat inspectors has been reduced to 7,000 from the 1980 level of 20,000. Rather than improve the environmental and working conditions that breed and spread disease, corporations and the federal government have chosen to replace sanitation with a new technology.

In 1999, the federal government approved the irradiation of beef (the irradiation of poultry, vegetables, fruits, grains, and spices had been approved previously). Currently, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering dropping its requirement that retail packages of irradiated food be prominently labeled with both the logo for irradiation and a statement of fact, "treated with irradiation." Instead of the prominent labeling of irradiated food, irradiation would be added to the list of ingredients (the FDA considers irradiation a food additive).

Organic standards prohibit the use of irradiation in the processing of organic foods.