Stalling on irradiation invites more illness, death
USA TODAY View: The FDA has dawdled too long on safety. There's no excuse failing to protect public health.
The best question on the food safety front these days is this: Why aren't producers irradiating red meat?
It's been two months since a food-poisoning outbreak in Colorado led to the recall of 25 million pounds of hamburger. Yet the federal government is still dithering over whether to approve irradiation. And that's despite the fact that even brief exposure to harmless levels of gamma rays can destroy much of the bacteria and other contaminants that cause food poisoning.
Why the delay? Mainly because the Food and Drug Administration has been sitting on a petition to permit the irradiation of red meat since 1994, even though the same process is already approved for spices, produce and poultry.
Adding to that apathy: public ambivalence about radiation. Hundreds of studies since the 1940s have found no convincing dangers, yet consumers are conditioned to be jumpy about radiation of any kind. That wariness, amplified by a few consumer groups, has left the nation to rely on federal "scratch and sniff" inspections that judge meat mostly on the basis of look and smell.
The fears are groundless. Irradiated food is not radioactive, and the minute chemical changes that result are indistinguishable from those that occur generally when food is cooked. Some studies have reported adverse effects suffered, for example, by dogs fed large quantities of irradiated pineapple jam. But what would you expect?
Realistic alternatives, meanwhile, are lacking. The government can continue to tell everyone to cook food thoroughly. But not everyone is listening. It could hire thousands of extra meat inspectors. But that' s expensive and still spotty. It could wait for emerging technologies - using light to pasteurize food, for instance. But those won't be on line for years. In the meantime, irra diation is proven to help preserve foods and make them safer, and it has been used for decades on other products without mishap. Easy call.
Irradiation won't destroy every pathogen. And irradiating all the meat Americans consume each year just isn't practical.
But the nation's food supply is rapidly changing. There is more large-scale domestic production, thus more chance that a single contamination might spread. And more food is imported from abroad. Result:.more potential for consumer exposure to new and newly mutated microbes. Against all that, consumers can hardly afford to indulge retro-'50s phobias. People who don't want to buy irradiated meat shouldn't have to. But why deny the option to more progressive consumers.
Better options available
Opposing view: What's the rush? Let's take some simple, commonosense steps to protect our food supply.
By Michael F. Jacobson
Do consumers want irradiated food? Advocates say "yes" and propose zapping everything from basil to burgers with cobalt-60 to kill E. coli and other germs. We need to stem the epidemic of food-poisoning outbreaks, but irradiation should be the method of lastresort, not first.
For starters, constructing countless new irradiation facilities would take years and would be extraordinarily costly. Also, the radioactive chemicals in those facilities could endanger workers and contaminate the environment.
Many consumers are hesitant to buy foods bearing a notice "treated with irradiation." They are concerned about vitamin losses, impaired taste and the safety of the new technology. And people prefer food that is really clean to food contaminated with fecal matter, even if it is germ-free.
The food industry's self-serving response to consumer resistance has been to persuade the Senate to repeal the requirement that irradiated foods be conspicuously labeled. The House is set to vote next week.
Instead of simplistically treating food with radioactive cobalt a systematic attack is needed to minimize levels of dangerous microorganisms. Then, to buttress industry's efforts, the government should be given power to recall tainted food and fine companies that endanger fives, as the administration has proposed. Also:
- Farmers should raise livestock in ways that prevent the spread of germs, not encourage infections through overcrowding and other factory-farming methods.
- Sloppy slaughterhouses - where one germ-ridden carcass may contaminate others - should be upgraded or shut down.
- Hamburger makers should be required to test their products for bacteria and be barred from adding today's leftovers to tomorrow's patties.
- Supermarkets and restaurants should be required to maintain careful protections against food contamination.
- Sensible new technologies should be introduced: washing chicken carcasses in benign disinfectants, cleansing beef carcasses with steam, inoculating livestock with safe bacteria to crowd out dangerous ones.
That kind of comprehensive approach should provide the greatest protection at the lowest cost If that fails to bring food poisoning under control, then, and only then, should we irradiate.
Michael F. Jacobson is executive director of Center for the Science in the Public Interest
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