Newsletters: January - February 2008
Should Our Food Be Irradiated?
Natural Times-January/February 2008
By Paul Rutkovsky
What would be the best way to reduce or eliminate America's 78 million cases of food poisoning every year? Bombard food with nuclear waste or powerful x-rays or gamma rays, which destroys essential vitamins and nutrients, creates unique radiolytic chemical compounds never before consumed by humans, and generates carcinogenic byproducts such as formaldehyde and benzene? Or, clean up the nation's filthy slaughterhouses and feedlots, stop contaminated runoff from intensive confinement feedlots from polluting adjacent farms (as in the recent e-coli infected spinach recall), and stop feeding livestock with slaughterhouse waste and manure?
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is at it again. They are proposing new federal regulations that will allow manufacturers and retailers to sell controversial irradiated foods without labeling them, as previously required by law. But they are proposing to label some irradiated food as pasteurizedÑwhich is very misleading to consumers.
Although this is another common sense issue, the FDA, factory farming, and the nuclear industry seem to think as long as the food looks and smells normal, chances are better than good you won't know whether that specific food has been irradiated or not. The FDA does not seem to be interested in the health and safety of U.S. citizens. Why can't the FDA enforce regulations to keep slaughterhouses clean and safe?
Research has revealed a wide range of problems in animals that eat irradiated food, including premature death, a rare form of cancer, reproductive dysfunction, chromosomal abnormalities, liver damage, low weight gain and vitamin deficiencies.
With this new proposal, food irradiation dose limits would be removed, health and safety regulations discarded, and substandard food could be ÒtreatedÓ with high-dose radiation in unlicensed and dirty facilities. As consumers of food, do we have the right to know if our food is irradiated? Should we be aware of the ingredients in processed foods? These would seem to be very simple questions to answer.
In May 2007, the United States began to accept shipments of irradiated mangoes from India, the first U.S. imports of irradiated fruit. Irradiation was approved in 2002 as a treatment for all pests in some fruits and vegetables entering the United States. In 2006, irradiation was approved for a wider range of food products, including Indian mangoes, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Concerns have been expressed by public health groups that irradiation, by killing all bacteria in food, can serve to disguise poor food-handling practices that could lead to other kinds of contamination.
In the United States, wheat flour, white potatoes, fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices, and pork and poultry are USDA approved for irradiation.
As of this writing, organic foods are not irradiated.
All facts came from the Organic Consumers Association's web site.
For a more complete understanding of irradiation go to: www.organicconsumers.org
