More on irradiating food, long

[Guest guest]

Irradiated Food Gets Thumbs-up From USDA - 10/22 San Francisco Gate

10/23/2002 Irradiated Food Gets Thumbs-up From USDA - 10/22 San Francisco Gate

The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued the new rule allowing irradiation on Friday. It will be published in the Federal Register on Wednesday.

The move will mean a big jump in the amount of irradiated foods available to U.S. consumers, both proponents and opponents of irradiation technology said.Imported fruits and vegetables make up some 40 percent of the produce consumed in this country. That added up to an estimated $39 billion last year.

Irradiated papayas and other fruits from Hawaii have been sold on the mainland for the past two years -- Safeway sells them in Southern California and they'rewidely served in restaurants. But the new rule will open the field to growers all over the world.

American health and food authorities almost universally tout irradiation as safe for food, especially to kill lethal bacteria in meats. But consumers haveshied away from buying it, and groups opposed to irradiation say the long-term effects need more study before the process goes into wider use.

Food safety advocates, including Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research at the University of California at and an irradiationproponent, lauded the new produce rule.

"This opens the door for supermarkets to offer a wider range of exotic and interesting products," Bruhn said. She mentioned rambutan and mangosteen, tropicalfruits generally unavailable in this country without irradiation, as examples.

"It presents no new risks that we are aware of," Bruhn said. "Most people are not eating five servings of tasty fruits a day, and this will give them morechoices than they've had before."

LONG-TERM EFFECTS , director of Whole Foods' northern Pacific region, disagreed.

He called it good news that part of the impetus toward irradiation is that methyl bromide, a fumigant commonly used to kill pests on imported produce, isbeing phased out.

"But we don't want the cure to be worse than the disease," he said. "We still don't know the long-term effects of irradiation."

Even if irradiated produce becomes more widespread, he said, "We are not going to carry it."

The 140-store chain, built around an organic ethic, will either go without or will use its buying leverage to get growers to develop alternative pest eradicationmethods, said.

Unlike the pressures for more irradiated meats, the fruit and vegetable rule isn't about food safety. It's about protecting American crops from foreignpests like the Mediterranean fruit fly.

Most fruits and vegetables imported into the United States are already treated in some way -- with high heat, extended cold, raised air pressure or chemicalslike methyl bromide. The new rule allows irradiation as an alternative.

The California Farm Bureau Federation said that while imports are a concern for the state's agriculture industry, the new rule, on balance, is a boon. Californiaagricultural officials worked with the USDA to develop the new rule.

"We're very concerned about keeping pests out of California," said Dave Kranz of the farm bureau. "In part that's because we depend to a great extent onselling our crops in other states and other nations. Whenever another pest comes in, it constricts our ability to sell our produce to other locales."

TROPICAL FRUITS LIKELY FIRSTPractically, tropical fruits like mangoes, rambutan, pineapples and papayas from Southeast Asia, Mexico, Central and South America are likely to be thefirst candidates for irradiation. Fruit flies are endemic in those regions, some tropical fruits don't hold up well under the other kinds of treatment,and produce exports are linchpins of the economies in those regions.

How soon more irradiated produce will show up in the market is hard to predict. Some countries, like Thailand and Brazil, already have irradiation plantsup and running.

The main company selling irradiation technology in this country, San Diego- based SureBeam, says it is at various stages of negotiating with 11 countriesabout building plants using the firm's electron-beam machinery.

SureBeam uses electron beams to generate ionizing radiation that kill pests both on and in foods. Other companies use gamma rays. The U.S. Food and DrugAdministration considers irradiated foods safe for human consumption.

NO DISCLOSURE FOR DINERSFederal law requires that irradiated foods carry labels saying so. Fruits and vegetables that aren't individually labeled must have a sign nearby sayingif they've been irradiated. But restaurants are not required to cite which, if any, ingredients have been irradiated.

SureBeam President Larry Oberkfell said he believes importers will start irradiating fruits first, and then the more perishable vegetables.

First up will be "mangoes, papayas, a lot of exotics -- mangosteen, lychee - - bananas in some circumstances and pineapples. It depends on the country andtheir insect populations," Oberkfell said.

While the process adds a few pennies per pound, Oberkfell said fruit sellers benefit because irradiation stops natural ripening and extends shelf life.

The new rule will "be very good for our business," he said.

********

DOWNSIDES OF FOOD IRRADIATION

Date: 18 Jun 2004From: " Montague" {@...}

FOOD IRRADIATION: HEALTH RISKS, MISLEADING CONSUMERS, MISUSE OF THE TECHNOLOGY

Medical News Today, June 18, 2004

Food irradiation is being promoted by some international bodies and industry groups as the answer to the growing problem of food poisoning, and as a means to combat world hunger by reducing spoilage and extending food shelf life. A proposal to relax the global standards governing food irradiation, including the removal of the current maximum irradiation dose limit, is now under discussion.

The European Commission is also deliberating over whether to extend its list of foods permitted for irradiation in all EU member states. The current list includes only herbs, spices and vegetable seasonings, but the possible extension would mean many other foods could be irradiated in all member states. Yet consumer concerns persist over the numerous potential negative impacts of irradiating food.

HEALTH RISKS

- Food irradiation can result in loss of nutrients, for example vitamin E levels can be reduced by 25% after irradiation and vitamin © by 5-10%. This is compounded by the longer storage times of irradiated foods, and by loss of nutrients during cooking, which can result in the food finally eaten by the consumer to contain little more than 'empty calories'. This is potentially damaging to the long and short-term health of consumers, particularly for sections of society already failing to obtain adequate nutrition.

- When food is exposed to high doses of ionising radiation, the chemical composition and nutritional content of food can change. Radiolytic by-products are often formed in irradiated food. Very few of these chemicals have been adequately studied for toxicity. One such chemical - 2-DCB - can cause DNA damage in rat colon cells at high doses.

- Food irradiation does not inactivate dangerous toxins which have already been produced by bacteria prior to irradiation. In some cases, such as C. botulinum, it is the toxin produced by the bacteria, rather than the bacteria itself, which poses the health hazard.

- Extension of the EU list of foods permitted for irradiation could mean that in future a significant part of the diet of consumers will consist of irradiated foods. The long-term impacts of this to health remain unknown. Far more research is required prior to exposing populations to such a diet.

- Irradiating products such as mechanically recovered chicken meat, offal and egg white, could mislead consumers into thinking these are safer. There is therefore a risk that consumers will fail to take necessary measures to prevent cross-contamination. The risk of recontamination of food after irradiation is very serious as a near sterile food is an ideal medium for very rapid growth of re-introduced bacteria. Irradiated food must therefore be handled with even greater care in homes and restaurants.

- Irradiation can cause mutations in bacteria and viruses leading to potentially resistant strains.

MISLEADING CONSUMERS

- Irradiating fruit and vegetables to extend their shelf life can mislead consumers by making 'old' food look 'fresh'. The greater the age of fruit and vegetables, the lower their nutritional value, not to mention the effects of ageing on their tastes and flavours.

- Consumers may be dangerously misled because irradiation also unavoidably kills off bacteria that produce warning smells indicating that the food is going 'off'.

- The irradiation of some products, such as dried fruit and flakes or germs of cereal, often considered as health foods (eg. muesli), could lead them to become misperceived by consumers as inherently contaminated food types.

MISUSE OF THE TECHNOLOGY

- Food irradiation can and has been used to mask poor hygiene practices in food production. With irradiation, contamination can be sterilised. This reduces the incentive to clean up sloppy food processing operations - the industry is provided with a 'quick fix as an alternative to dealing with the sources of the problem. The consumer has a right to expect clean food, yet irradiation can lead to the increased production of food contaminated with dirt - 'clean' dirt.

- Irradiation can be used to maintain or even worsen poor standards of animal husbandry. Overcrowding of animals whilst rearing and prior to slaughter, as well as the use of cheap but inappropriate feeds, all contribute to contamination of animal products such as meat, poultry and eggs. Cleaning up these products at the end of the production line removes the incentive to improve animal welfare.

- Breaches of existing labelling legislation have occurred in European countries, with the sale of unlabelled irradiated foods. This was recently discovered to be occurring again by a UK government detection survey which found that nearly half the food supplements sampled were illegally irradiated and unlabelled. Under these circumstances the consumers' right to choice is flouted. Relaxation of irradiation standards could worsen this situation.

- If they succeed, on-going industry efforts in the US to substitute the term 'irradiation' on irradiated food labels with terms such as 'cold pasteurisation' could serve to confuse and mislead consumers.

THE SAFETY OF WORKERS

- Workers risk accidental exposure to dangerous levels of radiation, particularly at irradiation plants using radioactive sources.

- The use of irradiation to sterilise meat at the end of the production line allows slaughter lines to be run at dangerously high speeds, since the greater contamination that occurs during high speed carving of carcasses can be 'cleaned up' at the end of the line. This approach increases the risk of accidents and fatalities by forcing meat packers to work faster than ever.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC COSTS

- Food irradiation is not a low-cost method. Irradiation plants are expensive and could help large multinationals to eliminate smaller and more local producers. Requirements for improved security measures at all facilities holding radioactive materials, are likely to increase the costs of irradiation plants, leading to an increase in the prices of irradiated foods.

- Irradiation supports greater globalisation of food production and supply, threatening local farmers and food processors.

SECURITY RISKS

- It has been reported that numerous unrecovered losses and thefts of radioactive materials occur each year. Recent events have raised concerns over the potential for terrorists to obtain these materials for use in 'dirty bombs'. A dirty bomb uses conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials. Such an attack could cause radiation contamination over several city blocks, but probably no deaths from radiation because of the low doses as the material is dispersed. Such an attack could spread panic and have significant economic impacts. It would require lengthy cleanup operations, although these materials are fairly easily detected.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

- Accidents at radioactive irradiation plants have already led to radioactive spills and contamination of surrounding land and water resources. This could happen again.

- The construction of more irradiation plants could necessitate more transportation of radioactive materials, entailing risks of accidents and radioactive leaks over a wider area.

- Irradiation allows food to be transported over greater distances, leading to greater air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions which contribute to global warming.

THE FOOD IRRADIATION CAMPAIGN BELIEVES THAT:

- the precautionary principle should be asserted until chemical by- products formed in irradiated foods have been adequately studied for toxicity in compliance with modern scientific protocols, and are proven safe for consumption.

- food irradiation is no solution for cleaning up foods that are contaminated due to unhygienic production lines.

- priority should focus on improving production, storage, and processing, rather than on killing off contamination at the last stage.

- food irradiation benefits the industry rather than consumers, and large multinational companies rather than local and small-scale producers.

- food irradiation works against local food supplies and its application for mass commodities is likely to undermine sustainability.

- good food doesn't need irradiating.

This article comes from The Food Commission, UK2004 Medical News Today

*******

Nuked Food Makes it to Grocery Shelves

ByMark Worth,

Don't blame Tom Harkin for being fooled. He was just trying to tell a good story.

On a fall day back in 1985, Harkin, newly elected Democratic senator from Iowa, told his former colleagues on a House subcommittee about how, while servingas a Navy jet pilot during the 1960s, he lived on pork that had been treated with radiation, ostensibly to make it safer to eat by killing harmful bacteria.

"I can remember eating some processed meat -- I think it was bacon or ham -- that had been irradiated and kept on the shelf in a vacuum-sealed package.I think it was preserved for seven years," Harkin told the panel, which was debating a food irradiation bill at the time. "We ate it, and I had never heardof such a thing. I thought to myself at the time, 'Why aren't we pursuing things like this?'"

Harkin's fascination surely would have been doused had someone leaned over and told him that in 1968, the year after he left the Navy, it was revealed thatrats fed irradiated food by military scientists died younger, gained less weight, and apparently grew more tumors than rats fed normal food.

Fooled once.

Later that fall day, the House subcommittee heard an American Medical Association official proclaim that using radiation to rid food of bacteria "is nota public safety hazard, and I can't emphasize that strongly enough."

Too bad no one was there to remind the fellow that just a year earlier, he wondered in a memo to his AMA colleagues whether irradiated food might harm theoffspring of animals (not to mention humans) who eat it, create mutant radiation-resistant bacteria, or sicken people who eat the stuff for long periodsof time.

Fooled twice.

Since that hearing in 1985, Americans have been fooled time and time again -- by government bureaucrats, and food and nuclear industry executives tryingto sell irradiation as a way to kill E. coli, Salmonella and other food-borne pathogens, while extending the shelf life (and, thus, the global market reach)of meat, fruit, vegetables, spices and prepared foods such as TV dinners and baby food.

Like salespeople, though, they're not telling the whole truth. Information that could help citizen/consumers make better decisions -- information abouthow irradiation depletes nutrients in food, causes health problems in laboratory animals, spawns mutant life forms, kills beneficial microorganisms, turnssome food rancid, marginalizes already struggling family farmers, encourages the proliferation of nuclear technology, and masks filthy slaughterhouse conditionsthat foul meat with feces, urine, and pus -- has been craftily excised from the public debate.

While an all-out scientific and philosophical war is being waged over genetically engineered food, federal officials and corporate interests such as Kraft,Tyson and Wal-Mart are quietly attempting to legalize and commercialize an under-tested, over-hyped technology -- which claims to make food safer by zappingit with the equivalent of tens of millions of x-rays -- that could pose just as many dangers to the public. If not more.

Listening to the Past

Though it was fully 100 years ago that an MIT professor discovered that radiation could be harnessed to kill bacteria in food, it wasn't until the 1950s-- under President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace initiative (which also promised that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter") -- that food irradiationbegan to nudge toward the mainstream. But once the procedure started to gain popularity, it didn't take long for problems to crop up.

That pork that a young Tom Harkin ate when he was in the Navy? Turned out it might not have been safe after all. Military-sponsored tests yielded all sortsof nasty problems in lab animals fed irradiated food. A short time later, three executives of the firm hired by the military to research irradiation duringthe 1970s were convicted of doing fraudulent work. No matter. The federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continued to allow potatoes and wheat flourto be irradiated and fed to the public.

Then came the innocuous-sounding Byproducts Utilization Program, under which the federal Department of Energy (DOE) started hunting around for places topawn off deadly waste from its nuclear installations -- such as the radioactive cesium-137 wallowing at the nuclear bomb factory at Hanford, Washington(arguably the most polluted place in the Western Hemisphere).

With the government's blessing -- if not its encouragement -- the private sector started to get into the act. Given the spotty record of companies usingradiation to sterilize medical supplies, however, one wonders how the government could have allowed them to start irradiating food. From 1974 to 1989,there were 45 recorded accidents at US irradiation plants. Among the worst:

* In 1977 a worker at the Radiation Technology plant in Rockaway, New Jersey, received a near-fatal dose of radiation, after which company president Welt ordered staffers to give false information to federal investigators. After some 32 violations for such offenses as throwing out radioactive garbagewith the regular trash, Welt was forced to resign (though the government soon after hired him as a $100-an-hour consultant and he eventually started anotherirradiation company.)

* In 1982 cobalt-tainted water was flushed down the public sewer system at the International Nutronics plant in Dover, New Jersey, leading to the federalconviction of a company executive who tried to cover up the incident.

* From 1985-99 the Neutron Products plant in Dickerson, land was cited for 192 safety and other violations. The place was so hot with radiation thata company vice president's contaminated clothes set off an alarm at a New York nuclear plant he was visiting in 1988.

* In 1988 a Hanford-harvested capsule of cesium-137 sprung a leak at the Radiation Sterilizes plant in Decatur, Georgia. The ensuing cleanup cost taxpayersmore than $45 million.

Government officials and industry execs still hold out hope that cesium-137 will find a niche in the food irradiation market, despite the Decatur disaster-- and despite the deaths of four people in Goiania, Brazil, whose bodies were buried in lead-lined caskets after they mistakenly handled radioactive cesiumin 1987.

Ruining Your Appetite

If irradiation plants sound scary, listen to what happens to food when it's blasted with gamma rays, electrons or x-rays.

For starters, dozens if not hundreds of formal studies conducted over the past 40 years -- all rejected by the FDA as being poorly done -- have revealedserious health problems in lab animals fed irradiated food. You name it -- shorter lifespans, low birth weight, kidney damage, immune and reproductiveproblems, chromosomal abnormalities, tumors. If it could go wrong, chances are it did.

In one of the few recorded studies conducted on people, Indian researchers discovered in the mid-1970s that malnourished children fed freshly irradiatedwheat developed polyploidy, a defect in the chromosomes of blood cells. (FDA officials triggered an international incident by rudely discounting the study,going so far as to publish false information in the Federal Register.)

What's worse, irradiation -- with all of its deadly unknowns -- creates an entire new class of mysterious compounds by literally smashing apart the chemicalbonds in food and sending electrons flying all over the place. Even though these "unique radiolytic products" -- as well as well-known toxins such as formaldehyde,benzene, and formic acid that irradiation can produce -- have mutagenic and carcinogenic potential, government officials have not come close to adequatelystudying how they could harm people. And, irradiation can stimulate the creation of carcinogenic aflatoxins in grains and toxic solanine in potatoes, thelatter of which sent 17 English boys to the hospital in 1979.

What's worse still, vitamins and nutrients take a beating under the onslaught of irradiation, destroying up to 95 percent of vitamin A in chicken, 86 percentof vitamin B in oats, and 70 percent of vitamin C in fruit juices. Essential amino acids and polyunsaturated fatty acids can be depleted as well.

A host of other unintended consequences can result, including onions that turn brown on the inside and meat that smells like a wet dog, the eliminationof such beneficial microorganisms as the yeasts and molds that help keep botulism at bay, and the possible mutation of bacteria into forms resistant toradiation.

Reinventing Government

Without exception, FDA officials -- for one reason or another -- have chosen to ignore the piles of research suggesting that irradiating food may be problematic.But that's not the half of it. The government has built its entire case in support of irradiation on a mere five studies -- none of which were done after1980 -- that officials not-so-enthusiastically said two decades ago "do not appear" to indicate the process is potentially harmful.

Moreover, since the FDA began stepping up its approval of the food and nuclear industries' irradiation requests in 1983 -- beginning with a request by theinfamous Welt to irradiate parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme and other seasonings -- no significant research has been done on whether the process issafe for the additional food groups and at the higher doses. For instance, FDA officials, who said in 1982 that irradiating food with 1 kiloGray of radiationwas probably safe, have little or no idea whether it's safe to irradiate beef and lamb with 7 kiloGrays, which the agency approved in 1997.

The government, as is often the case, should know better. The feds ignored the concerns of one of their own experts, former high-ranking FDA scientist Marciavan Gemert, who cautioned back in 1982 that no long-term studies had been done on irradiated food likely to become a significant part of people's diet.

Van Gemert's warning is as timely as ever. At this writing, the FDA is considering a proposal from the powerful National Food Processors Association toirradiate ready-to-eat food such as TV dinners and luncheon meat. The agency has also provisionally allowed pre-packaged food to be blasted with electrons(or "e-beam"), even though US Food Safety and Inspection Service chief wrote that "we have no data specifically supporting the assumption"that the procedure is safe.

Louria, chair of preventive medicine and community health at the New Jersey University of Medicine, has been raising red flags about the dangersof food irradiation for more than 10 years. And he's still as worried as he's ever been: "Until the industry is willing to agree to nutritional studieson each type of irradiated food and to put the results on the label, and until there is a proper study of the potential chromosomal damage of irradiation,we should not be irradiating our foods."

In Our Hands

Slowing -- much less stopping -- the government-blessed, corporate-bankrolled food irradiation movement is a tall order, to say the least.

This spring, Wal-Mart -- the largest retailer on Earth with $160 billion in annual sales -- began test-marketing irradiated meat to its customers. Wal-Martis buying the products from meat-packing giant IBP, which zapped them at an e-beam facility in Sioux City, Iowa, operated by Titan Corp., an erstwhiledefense contractor notorious for its polluted iron plant in Keasbey, New Jersey. Titan is also irradiating meat for Tyson, Cargill-owned Excel, and Philip-owned Kraft, among other major players in the ever-consolidating, ever-globalizing meat industry.

Corporate giants are also showing up on the research end of things. For instance, work at the Illinois Institute of Technology, one of the nation's leadingirradiation research installations, is funded by Coca-Cola, ConAgra, Kraft, Nestle, and Pepsico. And, many "food safety" advocacy groups throwing theirweight behind irradiation are actually industry front organizations. The corporate-funded American Council on Science and Health, for example, is chairedby A. Alan Moghissi, whose anti-environment and anti-consumer positions include fighting the removal of asbestos from schools and proclaiming that higherlevels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a good thing for the agriculture industry.

Funny, the food industry hasn't always been unified in its support of food irradiation. Just seven years ago, the editors of Meat & Poultry magazine tookthe technology to task, warning that it should not be embraced as a panacea to protect people from contaminated food. "To think we can literally cram irradiationdown the throats of consumers because it is the 'right' answer to our problems," the editors wrote, "is to step on the opinion of the very people we dependon for survival."

With industry and the government evangelizing in unison for food irradiation, it is, in fact, only the consumers can stop this under-tested, over-hyped technology from being crammed down their throats.

Mark Worth is senior researcher at Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. Those interested in voicing their concerns about food irradiation can contact:

Wal-Mart: 1-800-966-6546 (ext. 3) or 1-800-WAL-MART

Donna Shalala, Secretary, US Department of Health and Human Services: 202-619-0257 or 1-877-696-6775

, administrator, US Food Safety and Inspection Service: 202-720-7025

For more information on food irradiation, call Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program at 202-546-4996, or visitwww.nonukedfood.org.