By Larry Katzenstein

Our recent brush with anthrax-tainted mail, and the well-publicized use of irradiation to disinfect it, has had one salutary effect: Americans now realize that irradiation can safeguard not only their mail but their food supply as well. After long being leery of food irradiation, people are demanding it - which could mean far fewer illnesses and deaths from E. coli, Salmonella and other foodborne microbes.

In 2000, a national survey by the public-relations firm Porter-Novelli found that only 11 percent of consumers said they would buy irradiated foods. But in a follow-up national survey last November, shortly after the anthrax mailings, 52 percent of consumers said that the federal government should require irradiation to help protect the food supply.

Many foods can be irradiated, including fruits and vegetables, poultry, eggs and red meat, but you'll have a hard time finding any of them in stores. Since 1986, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration first permitted food irradiation, America's leading consumer groups have waged a smear campaign that has prevented the public from accepting the process and the food industry from using it. With surveys now showing irradiation winning favor, opponents are stepping up efforts to vilify it.

Those who demonize food irradiation play on two of our deepest concerns: anxiety over food safety and, especially after Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, mistrust of anything involving radiation. Opponents claim that irradiation makes foods radioactive, taints food with cancer-causing chemicals, offers the nuclear industry a way to recycle radioactive wastes and-quoting from a Public Citizen statement issued last year-allows companies to sell meat coated with "feces, urine, pus and vomit."

All those accusations are false. What irradiation does is "cold-pasteurize" food by exposing it to ionizing radiation (gamma rays, electrons, or x-rays) that disrupts the DNA of contaminating microbes. Since irradiation doesn't heat foods, it largely preserves their taste, texture and appearance while reducing bacterial levels by at least 99.9 percent. So a hamburger made from irradiated ground beef tastes just as good as an ordinary burger but can be eaten rare, with virtually no risk of illness and no danger from the treatment itself.

Scores of studies over the past 50 years have affirmed irradiation's safety, and many health organizations have endorsed the technology, including the U.S. Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the American Medical Association, American Public Health Association and World Health Organization. Public-health experts say that irradiation could be as important as pasteurization and chlorination in preventing illness and death.

Consumer activists are well aware of the scientific support for irradiation's effectiveness and safety. But with their mindless opposition to all things nuclear, they've chosen to ignore such evidence-and to sacrifice thousands of lives every year rather than allow a technology that uses radiation to become successful.

The irony, of course, is that "cynical disregard for human life" is the accusation activists love to level against Big Business. But when it comes to killing, the consumer movement's success in stifling irradiation makes corporations look like pikers.

The CDC recently estimated that foodborne illness strikes 76 million Americans each year and causes nearly 5,200 deaths. "At least half those deaths could be prevented by widespread use of irradiation on red meat, poultry and selected produce," says Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, a University of Minnesota bioterrorism expert and food-irradiation proponent. "So over the past 10 years," says Osterholm, "it's very fair to say that irradiation could have prevented 25,000 deaths."

Contrast those thousands of unnecessary deaths with the activists' favorite example of corporate manslaughter: the exploding Ford Pinto gas tank, which Ralph Nader plans to feature in his American Museum of Tort Law. According to "The Myth of the Ford Pinto Case," published in the Rutgers Law Review in 1991 by the late UCLA law professor Gary Schwartz, a total of 27 deaths resulted.

Several consumer leaders deserve special mention for their role in depriving Americans of safe food:
Ralph Nader. Good judgment and Ralph Nader rarely intersect. During his 2000 presidential campaign he came out against fluoridation, which the CDC has called one of the 10 greatest public-health achievements of the twentieth century. So it's no surprise that Mr. Nader - coauthor of The Menace of Atomic Energy - staunchly opposes food irradiation, which he recently called an "unproven and dangerous technology." More than anyone else, he is responsible for the consumer movement's rigid opposition to new technologies, especially those using radiation.

Sidney Wolfe. Most physicians favor measures that prevent illness but not Sidney Wolfe, one of the only healthcare professionals on record as opposing food irradiation. As director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, Wolfe is best known for bashing the pharmaceutical industry. But like his mentor Mr. Nader, Wolfe is rabidly antinuclear. In 1976, in one of the consumer movement's more embarrassing moments, Wolfe demanded an immediate ban on the sale of smoke detectors, calling them "a mindless and dangerous technology" because they contain minute amounts of a radioactive material, americium 241. He takes a similarly misguided view of food irradiation, routinely filing protests with the FDA when the agency allows new foods to be irradiated and attacking food irradiation in the pages of HRG's Health Letter.

Michael Jacobson. This former "Nader raider" heads the Center for Science in the Public Interest, famous for sniping at movie-theater popcorn and other fatty foods. With his Ph.D. in microbiology from MIT, Jacobson recognizes the value of food irradiation: "By irradiating chickens we could save hundreds-perhaps thousands-of lives and prevent millions of food-poisoning illnesses," he wrote in CSPI's newsletter. Yet for many years, Jacobson has done his best to alarm the public about food irradiation, alleging among other things that irradiation "may generate small amounts of toxic chemicals that may contribute to cancer"-and using the technology to scare up money. He has featured irradiation in letters to CSPI members, warning that "zapping factories" may appear in their communities and asking for contributions to "help us halt food irradiation."

Joan Claybrook. Public Citizen, the 150,000-member consumer advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader, describes itself as "a potent countervailing force to the might of Corporate America." Under its president Joan Claybrook, the group has certainly been a countervailing force to food irradiation. Calling the technology "a highly questionable procedure" in which "the nuclear industry and agribusiness have joined forces," Claybrook has made Public Citizen the pre-eminent group opposing it.

Public Citizen claims that 200 other groups have joined its "national campaign to educate the public about the hazards of irradiated food." As part of that effort, Public Citizen has organized demonstrations against stores carrying irradiated food and mounted letter-writing campaign when food companies have expressed interest in using irradiation. Mark Worth, who has spearheaded Public Citizen's anti-irradiation effort, told the San Diego Union-Tribune last October that "very strong theological beliefs" help fuel his opposition: "As human beings, we have to accept the hazards of life, and E. coli and Salmonella are part of life," he said, adding that he also objects to anthrax treatments and vaccines against smallpox and polio.

It's hard to tell which is more dangerous for society: the disease-causing microbes in food or the consumer groups that want them to flourish.

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Larry Katzenstein is a New York City-based medical writer who worked for 12 years at Consumer Reports.