Jacobson's Opposing View about food irradiation is full of internal contradictions and misstatements.
- Jacobson says more than once that food would be treated "with radioactive cobalt" or similar words. This is false. The only thing that would contact the food would be gamma radiation given off by cobalt-60 OR some other gamma-producing isotope such as cesium-137.
- Jacobson criticizes the irradiation option because building new irradiators would be costly, etc. but then goes on to propose "new technologies." Building new or modifying existing facilities to accommodate these "new technologies" would cost nothing I suppose.
- Jacobson invokes the concept of "benign" disinfectants, but with few exceptions disinfectants leave residues the ingestion of which would be undesirable.
- Jacobson proposes inoculating meat with "harmless" bacteria to crowd out the bad ones; this is ludicrous, and betrays his total lack of understanding of molecular biology and bacterial pathogenesis. Many bacteria generally considered harmless can cause illness if present in large numbers, and toxin-producing mutants can arise in virtually all bacterial species. The current situation would most likely just reappear after a while, with a new causative organism.
- Jacobson's proposal on farming methods is off the wall - the only modern technique that has been directly implicated as a possible cause is the use of human waste in animal feed. Incidentally, irradiation could also take care of this problem. There was a pilot project carried out at New Mexico State University almost 20 years ago on this very subject - use of irradiated sludge as a cattle feed supplement. Sandia National Labs did the irradiation, with Cs-137.
- Jacobson implies that E. coli-containing meat is directly contaminated with fecal matter when it suits him (e.g., consumer preferences), but then talks about secondary contamination (i.e., no direct contact with fecal matter) elsewhere in his piece. This semantic tactic is characteristic of junk science.
- Finally, Jacobson ignores decades of successful experience with food irradiation by the U.S. Army, commercial producers, and in other countries.
Sieglinde Neuhauser was part of the Beneficial Uses of Radiation Group at Sandia National Laboratories during the sludge irradiation project.
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