Dr. Mercola's Comment:
Folks this is hitting close to home. Can you believe these
guys decided to put one of the first irradiation facilities
in the US right where I practice?
I knew food irradiation was not good and have warned about
it over three years ago all the way back to issue
#25.
It turns out that Belgium - based Ion Beam Applications
(IBA) has received USDA approval to open the first gamma ray
irradiation facility for beef and poultry in Schaumburg, IL,
scheduled to open sometime in the spring of 2001. The facility
will be operated by Sterigenics International, IBA's Chicago
- based subsidiary.
Gamma ray irradiation uses a radioactive source, either
cobalt 60 or cesium 137 isotopes, for the purpose of pasteurization.
Studies on the effect irradiated food has on lab animals point
to grave questions about its wholesomeness. Aside from the
numerous unique radiolytic products (URP's, chemicals not
known to naturally occur in any food) it forms during treatment,
lab animals were often shown to have massive increases in
tumor rates, chromosomal damage, reproductive disorders, and
immune system compromise when fed an irradiated diet.
Paul Fehribach contacted me about this issue and forwarded
me information which really opened my eyes up about this issue
which I have posted below.
I would encourage anyone in Illinois interested in this
issue to contact Paul at 773-907-9845. Or you can sign on
to his eGroup at ILirradiation-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Food irradiation is coming to Schaumburg
-- from a company named SteriGenics.
"cobalt 60 loses part of its mass, which loss becomes
radiation that is absorbed and permanently
retained by the customers' products ... the cobalt
60 does not leave the customers' products once it is absorbed,
thus it is delivered to the customer..."
- Actual testimony by SteriGenics in a court of law, SteriGenics
V. County of Orange, California, July, 1996
A plain white building stands tucked away at the end of a
dead end street in an upper middle class suburb west of Chicago,
about a mile from one of the most popular malls in the Chicago
area. It looks just like all of the other buildings on this
street and those leading to it, with a neatly groomed lawn,
landscaped shrubs, and a few saplings striking a pose against
sanitary white-washed walls.
It could be "Any Company, Inc." but a closer look
reveals the squeaky clean name "SteriGenics"
next to a futuristic logo on the upper left hand of the structure.
Inside, what will be transpiring in the very near future is
anything but ordinary.
SteriGenics International, now a subsidiary of IBA (Ion Beam
Applications,) a Belgian company with a true global reach,
has received what is called a "Grant of Inspection"
from the United States Department of Agriculture to begin
using gamma radiation to irradiate beef and poultry for the
consumer market.
Sterigenics International is a company with a very interesting
history, every bit as interesting as the history of the irradiation
industry, whose torch it has helped to carry for over 20 years.
It's a history every American needs to know in the face of
the sweeping changes that are blowing in the food industry,
and the people of northeast Illinois, and Schaumburg, the
clean, vibrant, upper middle class suburb that is home to
that plain white building on the dead end street, should care
the most.
The company's web site touts that "SteriGenics has been
providing high-quality, irradiation services since opening
our first facility in 1979." But it doesn't give much
else in the line of corporate history.
In fact, SteriGenics International owned and operated the
irradiation facility in Decatur, Georgia, where a cesium-137
leak was reported on June 6, 1988 to Georgia State
regulators that ultimately wound up costing
taxpayers $47 million in decontamination costs.
The federal government gets rid of some of the most hazardous
materials produced in weapons manufacture, and private corporations,
who are required under Supreme Court interpretation of the
law to "maximize profit for shareholders" get to
use it to sterilize or pasteurize all types of consumer products,
including gems, medical equipment, food containers, all sorts
of food products, and yes, now beef, lamb, and fresh shell
eggs.
The DOE doesn't attempt to solve the regulatory question
of how the public can be assured of safety in these facilities
when private corporations have no other objective under the
law but to maximize profits, other than to assure the public
that these facilities will be overseen by the NRC.
They don't answer the question as to how the NRC can ensure
public safety when there have been accidents in the past.
Considering the thousands of irradiation facilities the industry
foresees popping up all over the globe, one is left wondering
where they will find competent people to staff all of these
facilities, and how they will be effectively monitored.
On June 6, 1988 Sterigenics previous plant had sensors detect
a leak in the pool of water holding the cesium-137 capsules.
It would take six months and over $1 million to find the source
of the leak. In this ongoing contamination incident, at least
three RSI employees were exposed to radioactivity,
carrying it on their clothes into their cars and homes, taking
it outside the facility. 25,000 gallons of water in the company's
source pool were contaminated.
It is unclear whether regulators were unable to recall all
of the medical supplies, consumer products, and food products
that had been shipped from the facility and were believed
to have been contaminated in the incident.
It would cost Georgia state and American taxpayers $47 million
and several years to clean up the site. The Georgia state
task force on the incident found in the ensuing investigation
that RSI had told the Georgia Department of Human Resources
that the DOE had the equipment to isolate and remove a leaking
capsule quickly, but that the equipment actually had to be
built after the leak was detected.
Many people close to these issues, however, believe it is
inevitable that cesium-137 will become
the preferred source for irradiators in the future,
given the supply problems inherent in cobalt, and the vast
stores of cesium-137 waste at the nuclear weapons factories,
as well as the DOE's desire to shift this burden off onto
the private sector.
If the irradiation industry realizes its vision of thousands
of irradiation facilities around the globe, there will likely
not be enough cobalt to go around, and the cesium-137, and
the DOE, are waiting in the wings.
In 1992, SteriGenics filed a technical assistance request
with the NRC to allow an increase in conductivity in the water
in the source pool (the pool of water in which the radioactive
material is submerged when not in use.)
On the surface, this may not seem alarming, except that conductivity,
under wet conditions, can be corrosive,
and crevices is the source capsules can conceivably contain
higher concentrations of conductive materials, accelerating
corrosion where it is not needed. Corrosion can also attack
the integrity of the source pool itself. Expressing concerns,
and setting guidelines to monitor corrosion, the NRC granted
the request.
Many people believe that while there hasn't been a major
accident at an irradiation facility in some time, it is not
a question of if there will be another accident in the future.
The record
of the industry as a whole is not pretty.
The NRC has recorded 54 accidents at 132 irradiation plants
worldwide since 1974. These accidents include mishaps involving
all types of irradiators - electron beam, cesium-137, x-ray,
and yes, cobalt-60. As well, that number is probably low,
since the NRC doesn't necessarily have information from the
approximately 30 "agreement" states which have the
authority to oversee radioactive materials handling sites
on their own. Illinois is one of these "agreement"
states.
The future is a big question mark for the irradiation industry.
Perhaps the bigger question in all of this is not whether
there is a possibility or even a likelihood of a radioactive
incident in the Village of Schaumburg, near a popular shopping
mall, but what it is that SteriGenics and their colleagues
wish to do to our food for their profit. It's ugly.
The first thing that must be recognized is that the FDA,
in approving this process for "pasteurizing" food,
was responding to political pressure,
not scientific fact in regards to irradiated food.
In fact, the FDA cited over 80 studies in its major irradiation
rulings since 1986 that the agency's own scientists had dismissed
as "deficient."
According to a report by Public Citizen, the agency has systematically
ignored evidence that irradiated food can be toxic
and induce genetic damage, and the evidence is compelling.
The science has been well established over more than 30 years
of research, in numerous studies, that irradiated food has
caused premature death, tumors, cancer, atrophy of reproductive
organs, reproductive disorders, immune system damage, chromosomal
damage, pituitary cancer, internal bleeding, and a whole host
of health problems in lab animals fed an irradiated diet.
The science just does not support the notion that irradiated
food is safe, as proponents in the government agencies and
the irradiation and nuclear industries would have us believe.
The most disturbing fact of all, facility safety and food
safety aside, is that there are completely nontoxic
alternatives available right now. Researchers at
Kansas State University have developed a new steam treatment
system that eliminates 99.99% on listeria in ready to eat
meats.
There are no questions surrounding the toxicity of steam
(water,) at least not that I've heard.
Researchers at Cornell University have found that by simply
feeding cattle hay instead of grain for the last five days
before slaughter, a one-million fold reduction in the presence
of acid-resistant E. coli O157:H7 can be achieved.
Ozone has been extremely effective as a sanitizing solution
the past, and it will be in the future. More study is needed
on some of these techniques, but why rush headlong into the
gauntlet of irradiation when we know there are other ways
of tackling the problems faced by our food supply?
Another great alternative to irradiation is safe food handling
practices, which have largely been thrown out by the meatpackers
over the last twenty years in favor of a cheaper, unskilled
workforce and faster production lines where meat is infected
by feces, pus, vomit, sores, scabs, tumors, and the like.
Federal meat inspectors have been stripped of their ability
to do anything when they see contamination in a plant. E.
Coli only has emerged as a major problem in the last twenty
years. A real viable alternative is to back up a little bit,
slow down the lines, and
get the waste out of the meat. Public health is more important
than meat industry profits, isn't it? SteriGenics currently
operates 20+ irradiation facilities in the U.S., China, and
Thailand. And has a joint venture in Indonesia.
These facilities currently irradiate spices, gems, medical
equipment, and food packaging, in addition to other materials.
Any one of these irradiation plants can be converted in little
time to meat and poultry irradiation.
Entire article is available at:
http://www.edgeupgreens.org/STER.php
Related Articles:
Food Irradiation
Q&As
FDA Failed to
Follow Safety Rules Before Legalizing Irradiated Food
Public Citizen
and Others Charge FDA Fraudulently Approved Food Irradiation
FDA Allows
Irradiation for Meat
