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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Mmm produce. Now covered in a layer of _sterile_ dirt.
I might not have a problem with irradiation in theory. However, I’m worried that in practice that the industry would use it as an excuse to slip even more as far as how clean our food is and that the irradiation itself might not be done properly.
Can’t they just stop getting poop all over everything?
Of course we all blindly trust the FDA, right?
An alternate point of view: [www.organicconsumers.org]
Some choice morsels:
· The longest human feeding study was 15 weeks. No one knows the long-term effects of a life-long diet that includes foods which will be frequently irradiated.
· There are no studies on the effects of feeding babies or children diets containing irradiated foods, except a very small and controversial study from India that showed health effects.
· Studies on animals fed irradiated foods have shown increased tumors, reproductive failures and kidney damage. Some possible causes are: irradiation-induced vitamin deficiencies, the inactivity of enzymes in the food, DNA damage, and toxic radiolytic products in the food.
· The FDA based its approval of irradiation for fruits and vegetables on a theoretical calculation of the amount of URPs in the diet from ONE 7.5 oz. serving/day of irradiated food. Considering the different kinds of foods approved for irradiation, this quantity is too small and the calculation is irrelevant.
· Even with current labeling requirements, people cannot avoid eating irradiated food. That means there is no control group, and epidemiologists will never be able to determine if irradiated food has any health effects.
Is it just me or does irradiated food often taste funny?
@Rectilinear Propagation: That’s basically my view. They can shoot food as full of microwaves as they want, but that’s no excuse for sloppy food safety.
I don’t have a problem using a microwave which I feel is analogous (though not equivalent) to irradiating food.
As long as the food is properly labeled, I don’t see what the problem is.
@ArmyOfFun: Labelling, (which is unlikely) AND some way to insure that there is still choice.
I use a microwave too (sparingly), but my concern is that irradiation will be come the defacto processing and no alternatives will be available for many classes of products, (try to buy common spices that aren’t irradiated)
@Rectilinear Propagation: @SkokieGuy: @nicemarmot617: Interestingly enough, humans have been irradiating food for thousands of years. How? FIRE. Every time you COOK something you are irradiating it.
There is nothing wrong with irradiated food.
Other countries have been eating irradiated food for years. It is such a low power thing that kills pest and other things like E. Coli that we don’t want in our food. It was either the History channel or the Discovery channel (I think) they showed how they do that. There is a giant pool of water and the food is lowered into it. The Radiation is applied for just a second and the food is removed, safer than when it was put in. The guy doing the story even drank a glass of water out of the pool.
Here is why I don’t have a problem with irradiate food. They hire Illegals to pick the food in the fields. They urinate, defecate, cough, spit and lord know what on the food they are picking. Just washing with water doesn’t do enough for me.
@sleze69: Thank you for sharing your scientific expertise with us!
Yes, and a 9 volt battery and a bolt of lightening are both forms of electricity, so therefore the same.
@OnceWasCool: If you don’t have a problem with irradiation, that’s awesome. I’m sure since the show you watched had access to a processing facility, it was a fair and balanced report and the processing company had no interest in presenting the information is a somewhat skewed light.
As long as ALL irradiated food is labelled AND there are easily available non-irradiated choices for those who prefer to avoid these types of food, I have no problem with it.
irradiated food is harmless.
I bet some of the raw food types freak out about microwaves too.
Better solution – start growing and shopping locally.
My brother won’t eat food that is microwaved, or should I say, food that he KNOWS has been microwaved. He eats in restaurants all the time and has no way of knowing for sure then. He also fears air conditioning. Mom had to beg him to use it in his car when he took her to the store this summer. I don’t know how he feels about irradiation, but I could guess. I’m thinking of buying him a whole roll of heavy duty Reynolds wrap this Christmas so he can make a full suit to go with his hat.
As you might have guessed, I have no problems with irradiation (or microwaves).
Reason # 21 why I will buy and eat radiated food? 28 Days Later…only the radiated food lasted those 4 weeks, hah
@SkokieGuy: He’s technically right, so why get down on him? I agree it’s much more fun to imagine sinister Big Food shoving spinach through the dregs of a nuclear waste facility, but that’s hardly what we’re talking about here.
By the way, the energies from cooking and ionizing radiation are closer than the voltage/amperage of a 9V versus lightning.
The best way to control this (and cheapest way) is to keep a garden. I’ve got about 40 lbs of summer squash – takers?
What about the Jalapeno peppers and tomatoes?
@Rectilinear Propagation: Mexican sewage on Mexican produce is the way of the future. You might want to get used to it.
Kind of like War of the Worlds but with a different ending where the invaders kill us with their germs and diseases instead of the other way around.
Nope. Won’t touch irradiated food. Sounds gross, and I don’t know what the side effects are. At this point, I don’t trust the FDA since they can’t even keep the food safe as it is now, how can the say this is safe? I’ll grow my own veggies (which I’m already doing), and I don’t use a microwave all that often. (preferring the taste and texture of oven and stove cooked foods)
The real concern about irradiated food (which is so insanely safer for you that it isn’t funny, sickness and death from food are under reported sickness drastically so) is that it is too good, it really does kill off the bacteria. Which means you aren’t exposed to it, your immune system is weaker etc.
Irradiated enzyme and vitamin damage and other stuff is just psuedoscientific talk for the most part.
@SkokieGuy:
Neither a 9-volt battery nor a bolt of lightning is a “form” of electricity- thank YOU for sharing your scientific “expertise” with us.
As for sleze69‘s comment, while it is probably an oversimplification of the issue, it is TECHNICALLY (and scientifically, for that matter) correct and got a chuckle out of me.
The knee-jerk reaction for most people is “radioactive” and “radiation” and “nuclear” = bad and do avoid. The fact of the matter is that a fire produces radiation that is not harmful in small doses. Case in point: if you want to stay warm, collecting infrared photons from a safe distance (say, 2 feet) with your hands is a great way to do so.
Yeah, so I think sleze69‘s point was that sure, radiation CAN be bad, but not all forms are bad, and just because someone uses the word “radiation” shouldn’t elicit an immediate response of panic and hysteria.
Please correct me if I’m wrong- don’t want to put words in people’s mouths.
Honestly, why on earth can’t they just label the stuff???? I want to know what’s in/been done to the stuff I choose to buy. PLEASE.
Also, the longest study done was 15 weeks???? What the …..????
Yes, wonderful now the spinach growers will be able to fertilize their fields in much more common forms of feces such as human and still be able to make it safe to eat! Rock On!
How about rather than creating a wastefully high energy, yucky and potentially long-term health threatening “solution”, they actually fix the problem: outlaw the vast vats of fecal-laden water that some Big Agra factories bath their greens in?
Kind of whacky, I know but…
@SkokieGuy: Studies on animals fed irradiated foods have shown increased tumors, reproductive failures and kidney damage.
Every animal study has these results – kidney damage, tumors, and reproductive failures. Partly it’s the result of the mass quantities the animals are force-fed, and partly it’s the simple fact that in the animals they use – rats, mostly – these conditions are inevitable if they’re kept alive long enough.
Sure, they sound scary – “irradiated foods are going to shrink your nads!” – but you get the exact same results from normal foods, GM foods, organic foods, or whatever.
@jswilson64: not dirt. Tasting dirt is fine, as any five-year-old boy will attest. It’s shit that’s the cause. So this “fix” is to have our vegetables covered in a fine, sterile layer of shit.
Yum!
I’m optimistic that labeling requirements will hold for this? Please?
@tevetorbes: To simply have a knee jerk reaction that anything “radioactive” or similar is automatically bad is of course simplistic.
In my first post I put a link to an alternate point of view. While it is from an organic site, who certainly has an agenda, they provide very clear and specific criticism of the FDA’s approval process and the studies that supported it.
The fact that we cook food with fire is a laughable basis for accepting this newer technology as safe, so my apologies for going overboard on criticizing it.
To everyone who is certain that this type of processing is safe, what are you basing your opinion on?
I wear no tinfoil hat (although it would nicely hide my bald spot), but questioning authority and not trusting our government to safeguard our health (or much else) is not an unreasonble position.
@Trai_Dep: outlaw the vast vats of fecal-laden water that some Big Agra factories bath their greens in?
There’s nothing like food to get people all mixed up. “Big Farma” are the guys using synthetic, chemical fertilizers. Organic farms are the ones who have to use manure and biosludge (fertilizer processed from human sewage), because the clean, synthetic fertilizers can’t be used.
If you’d like less e.coli on your food, stop growing it in stuff that comes out of buttholes. Stop buying organic.
@SkokieGuy: To everyone who is certain that this type of processing is safe, what are you basing your opinion on?
Sound sciences, like biology and physics. A decade of practice in several Western countries.
[en.wikipedia.org]
According to the above, nobody knows if it’s harmful for us.
Oh well, there’s so many chemicals and unnatural things in what we eat all the time that eventually (hopefully?) we’ll adapt to it. Until then, we’re at least surviving okay.
@crashfrog: And what studies, based on these sound sciences are you refering to? Long-term double-blind studies performed on humans? I am not aware of any. Please change my mind and let me know of links to scientific data.
Realize that since most irradiated food is not labeled, the fact that it has been used for decades is absolutely no measure of safety. If you are unable to determine whether a population did or did not consume irradiate food, you have no way to determine any causal relationship to a decline in health or illness. That is exactly why the industry is trying so hard to avoid mandatory labeling and that is one reason I think labeling should be mandatory.
Regardless of our opposite positions, do you have a problem with the two things I am suggesting; labeling & that non-irradiated alternatives remain available. Can you really make the case that providing LESS information or reducing choices is a desirable? (Especially on Consumerist!)
I don’t want to be the loudest voice on this thread, so I’m done.
@crashfrog:
True. I’d recommend most of these people in the thread look up Norman Borlaug.
A lot of it is due to misinformation. For example; know what an NMR is? Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Saves thousands of lives.
However, the word nuclear scared too many people. So now they call them “MRIs”
Microwaves? Nothing “nuclear” about it. It shoots microwave electromagnetic waves that induces rotational energy into electrons and the bonds between molecules of water.
Don’t believe me? Put a dry sponge in the microwave and heat for 1 minute. Won’t heat up very much.
Now wet the sponge, microwave it, and see how hot it gets.
there is a LOT of misinformation out there.
So, does this mean that my spinach will now give off a healthy green glow when the lights are out?
I’d probably be worried about irradiated food… if I didn’t have to breath in recycled office air, smog, dust, strange body odors from co-workers, bisphenol in my beverages and all the other daily pollutants that enter my body.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And when it comes to irradiated food, what doesn’t kill you makes you glow.
How about we allow irradiation AND require companies to use proper sanitation standards? This isn’t an either/or thing, but a layered defense against contamination.
I’m actually surprised at how many people here are so opposed to irradiation.
Meat is already irradiated. It’s not on the label. Irradiated produce won’t be labeled because consumers are not considered capable of deciding for themselves whether they want to eat irradiated food.
In Maine, Oakhurst Dairy was sued by Monsanto for accurately stating on the label they don’t use milk from cows fed Bovine Growth Hormone. The dairy won.
As a consumer, I want to choose. Irradiated spinach will probably be cheaper and many buyers just won’t care. I’ve reached the point where I don’t trust grocery sellers, because they prefer to hide facts, like radiation, hormones, etc. I want to be able to decide for myself. I might decide that irradiation is okay, but I want to have the choice. Labeling is *good*.
Consumer protection had pretty much died, then along came The Consumerist. Perhaps legislators will figure out that lots of voters want consumer protection.
The thing that has me worried is the wording I heard on a news story last night that said that the FDA was considering letting the labeling requirement for irradiated foods slip. You can wash off dirt and germs, you can’t wash off the chemical changes induced by radiation. Time to source locally or grow my own. (I’m not affiliated, and will probably build my own version rather than buy this, but this is a great idea for gardeners who have little space or poor soil to work with).
Wegmans will lie right to your face about irradiated beef, claiming there is absolutely no radiation used or given off in the process.
Can you tell that food has been irradiated? Is it detectable with a Geiger counter?
I’m pro-organic and pro-natural but nonetheless have a hard time seeing whats wrong with irradiation.
@SkokieGuy: You’re the kind of guy who thinks cell phones use magically different radio signals than FM stations, right?
Arrgh. Irradiating food doesn’t make food radioactive. This isn’t The Hulk, for God’s sake! There is absolutely nothing unsafe about irradiated food.
Here’s what irradiating food does: It damages the DNA of the microbes on the surface of the food so that it cannot survive. The type of radiation source used is not deeply penetrating, and indeed would be stopped by a sheet of paper. It only affects the surface of the food.
Now, let’s say that it did effect some genetic damage to some of the cells of the spinich itself. It doesn’t matter anyway because you digest it and break it down to monomeric forms. You don’t have full DNA strands roaming around your intestinal tract, you only have the individual nucleic acids.
It is a sad day when the great FDA states that irradiated food is no different than any other food. I for one will do all I can to avoid this at all costs…and at times like these, any extra cost hurts the wallet!
@theora55: I agree that labeling is a good thing – to a point. I can see arguments either way. The rBGH thing wasn’t a food safety measure; it was just a profit-increasing measure. And in that case the small dairy simply wanted to advertise that they DID NOT use it, vs. forcing others to label that they do use it. So in that case, I think it was more of a free speech issue. Some anti-irradiation activists wanted irradiated food to be labeled with giant nuclear symbols. That would have just about killed irradiation off, so I don’t believe it’s fair to require something misleading like that for a safe process that’s designed to increase food safety.
So basically…I think companies should be free to advertise that they don’t use irradiation, but I don’t think that companies that do use it should be forced to put giant warning labels on food when there isn’t scientific evidence that it’s unsafe.
Will this irradiated food be labeled? Will irradiated food be sold as organic?
@crashfrog: It’s the processing factories that have risen in the past decade – both for meats and for veggies – that have made what used to be isolated, localized, minor contaminations into continent-spanning health crises that threaten – literally – millions. It wasn’t a problem before since one bad leaf (or cut of beef) only infected a small batch of processed food.
Now, one contaminated piece is mixed with metric tons of fine pieces that are distributed nationwide. And the only entities that can afford these vast processing factories are Big Agri (or beef, or…)
That’s the problem and that’s what the (let’s face it: Republican) government refuses to fix, because of blind ideology, incompetence or legalized corruption. Gods forbid that businesses are told that poisoning consumers can’t be part of their business plan.
@Dobernala: No, it’s not detectable with a Geiger counter because the food is not radioactive.
@Gokuhouse: The WHO, in reviewing a huge number of studies on the safety of food irradiation, has concluded that there is no evidence to suggest it causes harm.
@tevetorbes: It’s a bit disingenuous to compare infrared radiation from a fire with gamma radiation from a nuclear source. One will make you pleasantly warm, the other will destroy your DNA. That’s why it works to sterilize food — it destroys the microorganisms’ RNA and DNA, killing them.
However, I have no reason to think irradiated food is unsafe. The food never comes in contact with the radioactive source, so it can’t be contaminated by radioactive material. There have been accidents at irradiation plants with workers being exposed to doses of radioactivity, but to my knowledge there has never been an incident where food was contaminated. The same process is also used to sterilize bandages and surgical tools.
My main concern is it might lead to sloppier food handling practices. It’s all well and good to know that the shit on my food is sterile and won’t make me sick, but I’d rather have food with no shit on it to begin with.
@Orv: Its just a matter of degree between “pleasantly warm” and “cooked”.
I prefer to eat food that’s not irradiated. I shouldn’t have to justify my preference to the FDA or anybody else.
Food producers favor irradiation because it’s cheaper than maintaining hygenic facilities for processing. They don’t want to label their food as irradiated because they know that most people prefer clean, non-irradiated food, but they don’t want to lose market-share for their extreme cheapness.
I’m the customer, give me what I want!!!
@Orv: I totally agree. Irradiation is not and should not be an excuse for otherwise improper food handling. And legally it isn’t; all the other food safety regulations still apply. But as long as the government still stringently enforces the other rules, I think adding irradiation could be a good thing. I don’t believe there are any harmful effects from eating irradiated food, and it’s been used extensively in other countries. And like I said, the WHO has concluded that it’s perfectly safe. I’m much more inclined to believe the scientists who wrote all the articles the WHO reviewed than I am to believe anti-irradiation activist groups, some of whom have a history of spewing anti-scientific nonsense.