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Consumer advocacy group Public
Citizen is urging Dr. Bernard Schwetz, acting commissioner of
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to deny all pending
applications to "treat" food with ionizing
radiation until new and up-to-date toxicology tests on
irradiated food are performed. In legalizing irradiation, the FDA
relied on tests from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Conducting modern tests is critical, because among the pending
applications is a request from the food industry to irradiate ready-to-eat
foods, which comprise more than one-third of the typical American's
diet.
Since 1983, the FDA has legalized the irradiation of numerous classes
of food, including beef, poultry, pork, lamb, fruit, vegetables,
eggs, juice and spices - at the equivalent radiation dose ranging
from 33 million to 1 billion chest X-rays.
Although it has given the go-ahead for
foods that comprise about half of the US food supply to be irradiated,
the FDA has failed to determine a level of radiation to which food
can be exposed and still be safe for human consumption,
according to Public Citizen research detailed in the recent report,
A Broken Record.
A copy of that report is available at:
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/rad-food/brokenrecord/brokenrecord.PDF
Additionally, the FDA has relied on decades-old tests that
do not meet current scientific protocols designed to determine whether
irradiated food could be toxic, or cause mutations or reproductive
problems in the people who eat it.
The FDA has dismissed a vast body of scientific
evidence suggesting that irradiated food may not be safe to eat.
Dozens of experiments conducted since the 1950s have revealed a
variety of health problems in animals that have consumed irradiated
food, including:
- premature death
- a rare form of cancer
- fatal internal bleeding
- chromosome aberrations
- stillbirths, nutritional deficiencies
- liver damage
Additionally, irradiation cannot kill the pathogen that causes
"mad cow" disease, according to the US Centers for Disease
Control and the World Health Organization.
In a letter to Schwetz, available at:
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/rad-food/LetterDrSchwetz.htm
Public Citizen urged the FDA
to deny the ready-to-eat food application, as well as requests from
the food industry to irradiate crustaceans (such as shrimp, lobsters
and crabs) and mollusks (such as oysters, clams, scallops, mussels,
octopus and squid).
The FDA's record on food irradiation is
a national embarrassment.
The time to go back to the drawing board is now.
Food irradiation is the process of exposing foods to ionizing
radiation - gamma rays, electron beams, or X-rays - to kill
bacteria, parasites, insects, or fungi that can cause spoilage or
make people sick. Currently, it is used on just a small part of
the food supply, such as many herbs and spices.
But major expansion of its use on other foods likely will occur
in the future. Federal regulations since 1986 have required use
of the label "Treated with Radiation" or "Treated
by Irradiation" for irradiated foods, in addition to using
a small "radura"symbol.
Rider language written by a few Senators and House members - and
never the subject of a public hearing or debate - was attached to
the Conference Report on the 2001 Agriculture Appropriations bill.
It seeks to force the Food and Drug Administration to replace the
clear label on irradiated foods with a new and vague euphemism like
"Cold Pasteurized."
The rider language is designed to serve the food and irradiation
industries and to confuse, rather than inform, shoppers.
Irradiation may well improve food safety for consumers, but it
should not substitute for good sanitation.
Whether you want to buy irradiated foods to protect a child or
aging parent from E. coli O157:H7 bacteria or you want to avoid
irradiated foods because of changes in taste, smell, texture, or
nutritional value, confusing labels will reduce your ability to
make that choice.
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