The Food and Drug Administration's decision yesterday to approve the use of irradiation on red meat to kill disease-causing micro-organisms in beef, lamb and pork is an important and overdue step toward improving food safety for consumers. After three years of study, the F.D.A. has concluded that irradiation effectively kills bacteria, such as E. coli and salmonella, but does not make the food radioactive or change its taste, texture or nutritional content.
Irradiation may be particularly useful on ground meat, which is often consumed without being cooked sufficiently to kill bacteria introduced during the grinding process. The recall by Hudson Foods last summer of 25 million pounds of hamburger meat that may have been tainted with E. coli bacteria shows how unsafe processing in a single plant can endanger consumers all over the country. A rash of serious food poisoning incidents in recent years, some of them fatal, has greatly increased public concern about better ways to insure food safety.
Some critics, however, have worried that irradiation, which typically involves exposing the food to gamma rays from a radioactive source, alters the food's chemistry in ways that could be dangerous to consumers. But years of study have not found that eating irradiated food poses any health risk. The irradiation process was first approved by the F.D.A. for poultry in 1990, and has been used even longer on spices, fruits and vegetables to prevent spoilage and kill insects. It has also been approved as safe by the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization and other medical groups.
Even so, the benefits of irradiation should not be oversold. For one thing, the process does not sterilize the food completely, and even after irradiation the food will require refrigeration and safe handling and cooking. Secondly, it is not yet clear that consumers will be receptive to buying irradiated meat, especially if critics issue misleading warnings implying that it is dangerously radioactive. Very few poultry producers have invested in irradiation machinery since they were allowed to in 1990, mostly because of a lack of consumer interest. Irradiation can help reduce bacterial contamination, but better efforts must be made to avoid contamination during the whole process of preparing a food product.
The meat industry has lobbied hard for irradiation as an alternative to measures that would increase the Government's power to recall bad meat and to fine violators. The F.D.A.'s approval of irradiation by no means negates the need to give Federal meat inspectors more enforcement tools, as was endorsed by officials of the Clinton Administration in testifying in favor of new legislation this fall.
The Department of Agriculture is expected to issue rules on how meat processors should go about irradiating their products. The department should require prominent and explicit labeling so that consumers know what they are buying, and it should encourage the industry to educate any wary consumers about the wholesomeness of such products. Ultimately, the public's health depends on safe handling of food every step of the way from slaughterhouse to the dinner table. Irradiation is one step, but does not make other sanitary practices any less important.
Copyright © 1997 Steven J. Milloy. All rights reserved. Site developed and hosted by WestLake Solutions, Inc.
Material presented on this home page constitutes opinion of the author.