For the first time ever, the FDA is going to allow manufacturers to irradiate produce at levels that can kill bacteria that causes food-borne illness, says the New York Times. The produce in question, spinach and iceberg lettuce, have, in recent years, been linked to widespread outbreaks of serious illnesses.
From the New York Times:
Advocates for food safety condemned the agency’s decision and asserted that irradiation could lower nutritional value, create unsafe chemicals and ruin taste.
“It’s a total cop-out,” said Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food and Water Watch. “They don’t have the resources, the authority or the political will to really protect consumers from unsafe food.”
Dr. Laura Tarantino, director of the Office of Food Additive Safety at the F.D.A., said the agency had found no serious nutritional or safety changes associated with irradiation of spinach or lettuce.
“These irradiated foods are not less safe than others,” Dr. Tarantino said, “and the doses are effective in reducing the level of disease-causing micro-organisms.”
The government has long allowed food processors to irradiate beef, eggs, poultry, oysters and spices, but the market for irradiated foods is tiny because the government also requires that these foods be labeled as irradiated, labels that scare away most consumers.
“People think the product is radioactive,” said Harlan Clemmons, president of Sadex, a food irradiation company based in Sioux City, Iowa.
What do you think? Will you happily eat irradiated spinach?
F.D.A. Allows Irradiation of Some Produce [NYT]
(Photo: smcgee )
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@crashfrog: Or, y’know, not aggregate vast amounts of meat/produce into huge vats so that if infected material is introduced – hey, sh*t happens* – rather than contaminating an entire continental population, small, isolated incidents stay, well, small and isolated.
These changes are only a decade old. It’s not as though agribusiness was running at a loss for the last 3,000 years until this recent change. The opposite: it thrived. So it’s perfectly viable.
It’s remarkable that you’re so much in favor of eating more fecal matter daily. Free country, consenting adults, but leave the rest of us out of it? Please?
* Notice how I did that? Gosh, I slay myself. I really do.
@Parapraxis: I’m aware of that, but there are repair mechanisms in place to correct that. Many bacteria also possess similar mechanisms. At some point you do cause enough damage to prevent replication of the bacteria, but if you don’t, you’ve just created a whole new problem to deal with.
@crashfrog: I’m fully aware of how the body processes normal proteins and starches. My question is what these molecules look like after irradiation and what are the consequences of the body attempting to use these modified molecules. There’s still debate over many of the synthetic chemical additives used in foods and cosmetics, with no real detailed studies on any of them. And that’s not even touching the GRAS (generally regarded as safe) ingredient list.
@Parapraxis:
It doesn’t DAMAGE the dna of bacteria….It DESTROYS the entire cellular infrastructure of the bacteria. You aren’t seeing the big picture with Gamma radiation. Gamma radiation at 1 million electron (1MeV) volts is capable of melting LEAD. That’s right. It destroys the strong nuclear force of LEAD. Gamma can do a LOT more than that. Depending on the exposure levels, it can break molecules down to component atoms or it can alter the atomic nucleus itself. Gamma is powerful radiation and should not be used on food. Food should be developed locally and consumed immediately. This is stupid and REALLY asking for it. The long term consequences of this could be really bad.
This reminds me of NutraSweet. Everyone said: Oh no, it’s safe because the marketing people said so. ORLY? It’s F’ing formaldehyde. Redesigned. Cook it and the endo-thermic reaction re-converts the magical molecule back to FORMALDEHYDE.
My god we are stupid.
Butter is bad for you… No wait! Butter is good for you!
So.. who are you going to believe? Live long enough and everything that you were told will be disproved.
Good luck!
*Kill the bacteria (PRO)
*Enzymes and nutrition also eliminated (CON)
*Possibly turn into Hulk from residual Gamma radiation (if ComiCon is almost here: PRO)
Conspiracies:
a) Tomato salmonella scare: tomato growers were trying to muscle major burger joints
b) Jalapeno salmonella scare: blame it on Mexico; buy US grown
(a+b) = sets up original plan for irradiating produce => irradiate meat so meatpacking plants can continue to let fecal matter to remain in your burgers, or worse, genetically-enhances E.Coli!!!
So it’s perfectly viable.
You do know that your “perfectly viable” model was projected to cause the death by starvation of more than two billion Indians and Pakistani by 1990, right?
And that it was only the development of new varieties, and new techniques, that prevented that from happening, right?
But, you know, that’s fine. Let’s all go back to organic farming and by-hand processing. I mean, we’re Americans – it’ll be brown people that pay the price.
@FrankenPC: Gamma radiation at 1 million electron (1MeV) volts is capable of melting LEAD. That’s right. It destroys the strong nuclear force of LEAD.
That’s not how melting works. (Lead’s strong nuclear force isn’t stronger than any other elements; the strong nuclear force is constant in this universe. And it has nothing to do with melting.)
Depending on the exposure levels, it can break molecules down to component atoms or it can alter the atomic nucleus itself.
Only as a function of its shorter wavelength and higher energy. Not because gamma radiation is a magic death beam. The energy you’d need to split a nucleus would be absurd. You’d require a photon of higher wavelength than anything we’ve ever observed.
It should go without saying, not within the capacity of a food irradiation system.
My god we are stupid.
Who’s “we”, kemosabe? The truth is that you’re on the first page of “Quantum Physics for Dummies” and you’ve worked yourself up into concern about something completely physically impossible.
Food should be developed locally and consumed immediately.
I guess it’s convenient you’ve revealed yourself as an advocate of the death by starvation of every human being that lives outside the latitudes of 20 to 50 degrees, or so.
Oh no, it’s safe because the marketing people said so. ORLY? It’s F’ing formaldehyde.
NutraSweet is not formaldehyde. For one thing, it’s an ester, not an aldehyde. Like almost all esters, it’s fairly easily broken down into formaldehyde, because formaldehyde is the simplest possible aldehyde. But that’s true of most esters. And your food is packed with them. Esters are why foods have different smells and tastes.
@crashfrog: The generally accepted beginning of the Green Revolution is in the mid-50s. So your claim that this abomination saved the world is off by about half a century. Apples and (crap-encrusted) oranges.
@Trai_Dep: The generally accepted beginning of the Green Revolution is in the mid-50s.
Not relevant to what I was talking about, but thanks for that.
Apples and (crap-encrusted) oranges.
Oranges grow up in trees. But we’d all like to hear your solution for growing lettuce in dirt without getting any dirt on it.
And if you think organic, local farming can feed a world of approaching 7 billion people, you’ve never lived near a farm in your life. Even with the techniques we have now, malnutrition and its related problems are still the leading cause of death worldwide. And you want to take food out of the supply? Dangerous lunacy.
Hey y’all, instead of taking steps to ensure proper and safe production of our foods, let’s just nuke the sh*t (literally) out of everything. The FDA thinks it’s a good idea, and you KNOW the government has our best interest at heart.
To everyone who keeps saying they don’t want shit on their produce: It’s already there, right now, only it hasn’t be sterilized. Nobody can fix it, unless you want to start paying real wages to lettuce pickers. You want to talk about prices going up?
@crashfrog: No, actually the Green Revolution cite is devastatingly apt, since you concern-trolled about the 7 billion people needing food (many of whom aren’t White!!) as a rationale.
The Lets-Mix-Everything-In-Ginormous-Vats-So-Contaminants-Are-Spread-Across-The-Continent approach is a recent “innovation” that has negligible impact on Feeding Poor Brown Children. What did, was the Green Revolution. Which preceded this change.
So yeah. This isn’t about saving the world: it’s about mega-corp distributors trying to spin the notion that so long as they perfume their excrement-laden meat and produce, it’ll be great!
Rational people would disagree. Since pooling turns out to be an ideal vector to spread infectious diseases (duh), it’s smarter to stop the practice, not develop some convoluted, distasteful FrankenFood “cure”.
But hey, have fun exploring excrement-related paraphelias. Free country.
This is why I grow my own in my garden.
@Trai_Dep: The Lets-Mix-Everything-In-Ginormous-Vats-So-Contaminants-Are-Spread-Across-The-Continent approach is a recent “innovation” that has negligible impact on Feeding Poor Brown Children.
To the contrary. Modern food processing is how we can get perishable produce from where it’s most effectively grown to where the hungry mouths are. It’s not just about your strawman of “enormous vats”, it’s an entire system of food handling that’s absolutely essential to feeding the world’s peoples. “Eat locally” sounds nice, but it’s a recipe for nothing but world starvation, since so much of the human population doesn’t live on or near arable farmland. (And why would we want them to? People shouldn’t live anywhere near farms, or else we’re wasting the land. People should live in deserts, and on tundras, and other places where they’re not displacing crops we need for food.)
it’s smarter to stop the practice
Stop the practice of what? Growing food in soil, outside? Using fertilizers? You’re consigning billions to death by starvation.
Green Foods + Radiation = Hulk / Popeye?
Want.
@crashfrog: straw-man argument. That’s all.
This is just like cell phones…everyone said they were safe 10 years ago. Now scientists aren’t so sure about that…
@crashfrog:
I love it when I actually learn something from a positive poster. Thanks! How rare.
-F
@crashfrog:
As much as I like reading your intelligent posts, what you said is not true. The nitrate drainage from massive over farming IS destroying the coral reefs via algae blooms. Talk your way out of that.
And yes, local farming IS possible via vertically designed hydroponics systems. Zero nitrate loss, high speed sustainable farming. If you give me the “they are too poor to do that argument” then you aren’t thinking globally. That’s the idea…think globally. We need to TEMPORARILY stop buying iPods and get the sustainable farming to them.
Large scale farming WILL suck the salt up out of the dirt and destroy it eventually. Turning farmland into deserts. The Sahara was Roman farmland at one point.
@SayAhh
(c) Nutrients (and therefore health benefits) irradiated out of veggies so ppl have no choice but to turn to vitamins and pharmaceutical supplements. Big pharma (who funds gov’t and therefore FDA) wins.
@sarah11918: You’re very smart, which rules out the possibility that sarah11918 = sarahpalin. Or does it???
“The wise physician first tries to treat a condition with diet. Only then does he turn to medication.” -Dr. Mayo, founder of Mayo Clinic.
“Let thy food be thy medicine.” – Hippocrates
Have far we have strayed from the wisdom of these two “forefathers” of western medicine!
It is from this viewpoint that I strongly oppose irradiating food. First, let me say that I don’t believe that irradiating adds anything dangerous to food. I believe you could eat it all day and you would be fine – it’s not radioactive, it doesn’t glow, etc. It is not what it might add, but what it might subtract.
Natural food, the kind that humans have been eating for thousands of years, processed as little as possible from its origin, is man’s original medicine. Plants contain a vast variety of natural chemicals and ingredients that have healing properties. If you eat a steady diet of plant based foods, you are given your body a constant intake of medicines that are cheap, have no side effects, and no risk. Most pharmaceuticals are based on plants, but isolated and extracted and synthesized. This is a really stupid and expensive way of going about things.
I’ll say that I used to be sick a lot. I used to eat a lot of crap food and shoddy meat. Since I’ve started to eat a more healthful diet based on natural foods, I just don’t get sick. haven’t even had a cold in years. Nothing at all. I certainly don’t worry about germs – I’m an elementary teacher, and the kids are always sick and sneezing. But I know my immune system can handle whatever I throw at it, because I give it what it needs.
So, it is probably “safe” to eat. But, what is taken away? How does irradiation effect the molecular structure of the food? Does it leave all of the phyto-chemicals and enzymes intact? We just don’t know-if anyone can show me one scientific study that has even considered this, please let me know.
The current American population is probably the most disease ridden ever in world history. I mean, 17% of GDP? Are you serious? I suspect the more we move in the direction of further processing our foods, devitalizing it, and cutting the link with the historical medicine humans have relied on, the higher this number will creep, and the sicker we will be.
I believe that irradiated foods are appropriate only for a small segment of the population that has a compromised immune system, and even then only on a temporary basis. For me, give me all the shit, dirt, and whatnot you want. It will only make me stronger.
We have to get “outlawed” raw milk as the only way to get milk from cows:
1. That are healthy and treated well
2. Produce freakin’ nice-tasting milk
I don’t want to have to get outlawed “raw” raw spinach in 10 years just because I want a product that is covered in feces. There must be a better way to manage the commodization of American food!
We all take risks when we don’t sterilize the world. Some people buy antibiotic toilet cleaners that advertise cleaning below the bowl–let that (il)logic set in for 3 seconds.