Zapped! How Irradiation Is Threatening Our Food System
By Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch
June 13, 2008

Source: Alternet

Contact: Alternet

The following is an excerpt from the book Zapped!
Irradiation and the Death of Food by Wenonah Hauter
(Food & Water Watch, 2008).

Over the decades, the effects of irradiation have been
compared dismissively to sunlight and glibly to atomic
bombs -- and many images in between. Few grasp it
completely, one of many reasons for its obscurity.
Though the issue is kaleidoscopic, one needn't be an
expert in physics or food science to gain a basic
understanding.

Knowing what irradiation isn't is just as important as
knowing what it is, if not more so. Irradiated foods
don't glow in the dark. It doesn't make food
measurably radioactive, though a mind-boggling FDA
ruling could change this by dramatically increasing
the maximum allowable radiation dose. And you won't
sprout a sixth finger if you eat the stuff.

Now for what irradiation is. It uses astronomically
powerful blasts of X-rays, electron beams, and gamma
rays to kill bacteria, to extend shelf life of food by
delaying ripening and spoiling, and to eradicate fruit
flies and other invasive pests.

Here's where a little chemistry and physics come in.
This radiation is ionizing, meaning it has enough
energy to blow apart molecules and eject electrons
that then bounce around crazily to form new bits of
matter. On the opposite end of the spectrum,
non-ionizing radiation such as microwaves, infrared,
and visible light can't smash molecules. The industry
commonly exploits this misunderstood subtlety to
confuse the public by inferring that irradiation is
just like microwaving.

No matter what type of facility you're talking about,
food is exposed to ionizing radiation. The ionizing
radiation can be from gamma rays produced by
radioactive materials like cobalt-60. Or the ionizing
radiation can be generated from using electricity to
produce X-rays or electron beams. Electron beams are
produced by linear accelerators. Because of its high
energy level, ionizing radiation can knock electrons
out of molecular orbits, which then slam into other
molecules, dislodge more electrons, form new
molecules, dislodge more electrons, and so on.

Gamma radiation is often preferred by food irradiators
because it can penetrate deeply, and using a
radioactive material to irradiate is cheaper. Electron
beams penetrate food to a depth of only one-and-a-half
inches, which means that linear accelerators are only
useful for irradiating thin foods like hamburgers.
X-rays can also penetrate deeply, but this technology
is much more expensive to use because of the large
amounts of electricity that are necessary.

Other forms of ionizing radiation include cosmic rays
and higher-frequency ultraviolet rays. Because they
are emitted from the nuclei of radioactive isotopes,
gamma rays, the type of radiation created by
radioactive materials like cobalt-60, have the added
ability to make other things radioactive.

Non-ionizing radiation includes visible light,
infrared (heat), microwaves, and radio waves. This
type of energy does not have sufficient energy to
dislodge electrons.

The best example of how ionizing and non-ionizing
radiation have vastly different effects is the human
body. Ionizing radiation damages chromosomes by
blowing apart DNA molecules, which can lead to
leukemia and other cancers. In the case of chromosomes
of sperm and egg cells, this can cause birth defects.
Children of women exposed to ionizing radiation during
pregnancy can be born with brain and eye
abnormalities, skeleton defects, an abnormal number of
fingers and toes, and failure to thrive.

Non-ionizing radiation, because of its lower energy
level, can merely cause molecules to vibrate and heat
up-again like microwaving leftovers. Electrons are not
ripped out of their orbits. Chromosomes and DNA are
not damaged.

No, the ionizing radiation used to "treat" food does
not get passed on to people who eat irradiated foods.

However, irradiation does create changes in food, and
is regulated as a food additive. The FDA is required
by federal law to establish at least a 100-fold safety
factor for humans. This is achieved by determining the
highest level at which laboratory animals are unharmed
by a proposed additive-the "highest no-adverse effect
level"-and then dividing that level by 100.

But, in violation of their own safety protocols,
including the 100-fold safety factor, the FDA has
approved many foods for irradiation. Scientists have
observed serious health problems in lab animals fed
irradiated foods. Those include premature death,
cancer, tumors, stillbirths, mutations, organ damage,
immune system failure and stunted growth.

However, it's what irradiation does to bacteria that's
found in food -- obliterating their DNA so they cannot
reproduce -- not the safety issues that has created
interest among meat industry executives and their
allies in government. Foodborne illness, largely the
result of industrialized food production, has sown
panic both here and abroad. Once-harmless bacteria are
mutating into deadly strains that medicine can't keep
up with. For instance, E. coli, a common bacteria in
feces mutated into a the deadly 0157:H7 strain, which
has killed hundreds of people. Yet very few industry
and government leaders are interested in fundamental,
long-overdue reforms of the food safety and inspection
system that would address this issue.

USDA Reduces Inspections, Filth Increases

Quite the opposite. Starting with the Clinton
administration, the federal government has been
lobbied by the meat industry to sharply reduce the
authority of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
inspectors and handed more power to meat companies to
"inspect" themselves. This was done at the same time
that the technology to speed up slaughter lines became
available -- 200 birds per minute, 1,100 hogs and 400
cows per hour.

Less inspection and faster slaughter and meat
processing spells disaster. After dozens of people
were killed, recalls were issued for hundreds of
millions of pounds of potentially dirty meat. Stuff
was getting through that shouldn't have been.

Irradiation offers an alluringly simple solution:
instead of keeping meat free of feces, urine, pus,
vomit and other bacteria havens during animal
slaughter and processing, just zap food at the end of
the line, killing the bacteria regardless of how much
it had contaminated the meat.

However, consumers don't want to eat fecal matter or
other contaminants, even if the bacteria has been
killed. Consumers want to be confidant that there food
is safe and clean. Rather than ringing out every
possible cent of profit by moving slaughter lines at
impossibly fast speeds, and reducing inspection, the
meat industry needs to slow down the lines and the
USDA needs to tighten up inspection.

But, the industry is looking for a silver bullet. And,
with the acceleration of globalized food production,
irradiation can enhance profits because it increases
shelf life at the same time that it kills bacteria.
This is attractive to some multinational corporations
that are moving their operations to the developing
world, where labor is cheap and environmental laws are
often not enforced.

Imagine the excitement at a company like Dole that
produces fruit in Latin America where labor costs are
a fraction of those in the United States, and having
the produce last up to three times as long as its
non-irradiated counterpart. An auxiliary benefit is
irradiation's sterilization of insects. In the past,
many fruits and vegetables could not be shipped into
the United States because of the fear of invasive
insects, but irradiation solves that problem. No
wonder some irradiation proponents view the technology
as a silver bullet.

The Road To Irradiation

While industry and government have only recently begun
to hail irradiation as a revolutionary technology, it
was first legalized in the U.S. way back in 1963. The
Army won permission from the Food and Drug
Administration to irradiate bacon and serve it to
military personnel. With hostilities on the rise in
Southeast Asia, the Pentagon needed better ways to
keep food from rotting before reaching distant
battlefields.

In the first of many setbacks, the FDA yanked the
Army's bacon permit when secret papers documenting
premature death, cancer, and other serious health
problems in lab animals fed irradiated foods came to
light. At a Congressional Hearing on food irradiation
in 1966, an aghast member of Congress, Melvin Price,
who'd eaten irradiated food called himself a "guinea
pig." Two years later, an unnerved FDA official,
Associate Commissioner Daniel Banes, feared another
Thalidomide disaster.

The FDA renewed its interest in irradiation in the
early 1980s. But the agency's flip-flop had so far
almost nothing to do with food safety, and almost
everything to do with politics. The U.S. Department of
Energy (DOE), a big promoter of all things nuclear,
advocated using the radioactive waste left behind from
making bombs to irradiate food. DOE pressured the FDA
to reverse its long-held position that irradiated
foods pose health risks.

The experiment ended in disgrace in 1988 when a
radioactive cesium-137 capsule that was being used to
irradiate food sprung a leak near Atlanta, Georgia. An
estimated 70,000 milk cartons, contact lens solution
boxes and other containers were shipped out from the
irradiation facility after they were splashed with
radioactive water. Only about 900 of the contaminated
containers were recovered. The ensuing taxpayer-funded
cleanup cost $50 million.

Still, the FDA went ahead and legalized
irradiation-based on shaky scientific evidence-for
many types of food, including fruit, vegetables, beef,
poultry, pork, eggs, spices, shellfish, and fruit and
vegetable juice. As of this writing, the FDA was
considering legalizing irradiated ready-to-eat foods
and vitamins, despite a shocking lack of research
vouching for the safety of these foods when irradiated
(see Appendix E for approved and proposed foods).

In addition to the U.S., irradiated foods are legal in
about 50 countries scattered around the globe (see
Appendix F). Exact figures are impossible to
calculate, but an estimated 250,000 tons of food-500
million pounds-are zapped worldwide each year. Of
that, about a third is herbs and spices, much of which
is Chinese garlic. A variety of irradiated staple
foods have been sold to the public since the 1970s.
Irradiated onions have been sold in Argentina, dried
fish in Bangladesh, apples in China, potatoes in
Pakistan, mangoes in South Africa and "nahm"
(fermented pork sausage) in Thailand.

The history is fuzzy, but irradiated foods are
believed to have premiered commercially in the U.S. in
March 1992, when a grocer named James Corrigan began
selling zapped strawberries, grapefruit, and oranges
in his family-run store, Carrot Top, in the Chicago
suburb of Glenview. He stocked irradiated chicken a
year later, bringing national attention to Food
Technology Service. This was also the year of
Jack-in-the-Box, which again thrust irradiation into
the spotlight and led the FDA to legalize irradiated
beef.

On May 16, 2000, frozen hamburgers irradiated by a
linear accelerator in Sioux City, Iowa, went on sale
in 84 grocery stores in the Twin Cities. The media
devoured the story: "Incredible." "Historic."
"Groundbreaking." Within two years, according to the
food irradiation industry, zapped beef was on sale
coast-to-coast in 5,000 stores, including
Albertson's/Jewel-Osco, Giant, Pathmark, Safeway, and
Winn-Dixie (though this figure could never be
independently confirmed. However, it turns out that
most of the media attention was hype that didn't
confer economic benefits to the irradiation industry.

But, after 50 years of disappointment and humiliation,
the irradiation movement puffed out its chest-and
declared that irradiation's time had come. It did, at
times, to disturbing and laughable extremes.

In 2003, when the USDA lifted its ban on irradiated
ground beef in the National School Lunch Program,
which feeds 27 million financially disadvantaged
children a day, the irradiation industry seemed to
have reached an important turning point. Thus far,
however, the decision seems to have backfired. As if
it wasn't controversial enough that the government was
delivering captive consumers to the irradiation
industry. These consumers are poor children who have
little choice but to eat what's put in front of them.
Worse still, schools are not required to tell the
public if they're serving irradiated foods.

Outraged parents pounded the USDA with e-mails and
phone calls. About a dozen U.S. school districts were
quick to ban irradiated foods, including Los Angeles,
San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. In a departure
from decades past, the media coverage was critical to
irradiation, even hostile in places. As of this
writing, no U.S. school had ordered irradiated ground
beef. Beyond the smattering of irradiated burgers
still on grocery store shelves, the only other zapped
foods known to be irradiated in significant amounts in
the U.S. are herbs and spices. No one really knows how
much food is really being irradiated.

Deepening the mystery, public disclosure is also not
required in restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes,
schools, and other institutional settings for any
irradiated foods.

Public disclosure has always been a slippery matter.
Sales are difficult to track because the major
irradiation companies almost never identify their
clients, to avoid public opposition. Moreover,
government officials say they don't keep track of what
foods are irradiated or where they're sold. The
nuclear industry is fond of calling consumer advocates
and environmentalists paranoid and suspicious ...