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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@AtomikB: On what basis do you prefer not to eat it? Do you think it’s dangerous?
So instead of regulating the industry you’re adding another step to the process?
wow
@AtomikB:
Even perfectly treated meats can be harbingers for incredibly virulent strains of bacteria.
Food safety regulations MINIMIZE the possibility of infection. It would be ridiculous to claim that some magical method would ELIMINATE it. It is a combination of hygenic practices, irradiation (YES, irradiation), and proper temperature storage that makes food safety what it is today.
You can’t just ignore the health benefits of irradiating food just because you don’t agree with how it’s done.
But maybe the radiations will give us all superpowers. That’s a plus, right?
Anything that is grown outside has a good chance of being pooed on by a bird or peed on by a badger or something. And you can’t get ride of the potential disease this can cause by just washing it off. Because if bird poo sat on spinach in a field for a week, salmonella (or any disease that might have been in the poo) will have crept into the pores of the leaves multiplying and multiplying. So you can wash the poo off after the spinach is harvested, but the spinach is still infected and will make someone sick. Irradiation is fine by me – I will actually eat more salad and raw vegetables if I’m able to choose irradiated versions. And of course will still wash it to get rid of any residue.
@ChuckECheese: I already have super-powers – invisibility while driving! That’s my explanation for people pulling out in front of me all the time and making me slam on the brakes….
@SkokieGuy: Regardless of our opposite positions, do you have a problem with the two things I am suggesting; labeling & that non-irradiated alternatives remain available.
None whatsoever. The only thing I have a problem with is pseudoscientific fear-mongering.
I don’t have any issues with irradiation. I don’t honestly know whether the methods used are safe or not, but it does seem comparable to a microwave.
I use my microwave often. However, on occasions when I get shit on my food, I always throw the food away as opposed to making it safe to eat in my microwave. Of course, I am very careful not to get shit on my food in the first place, so it never happens.
@theora55: When I grow up I want to go to Bovine University.
@crashfrog: I know someone who did animal studies, and she told me rats almost always die of cancer. It’s if they die of cancer sooner then they should that they say it could cause cancer. Most people balk when they realize that they almost always die of cancer eventually.
As someone who is still weak from a recent horrible bout of salmonella, I say bring on the irradiated food. It’s about damned time we caught up with the rest of the industrialized world on this. It’s ridiculous that we let unfounded fears hold us back on this. Ooooh, it’s radiation! That word sounds scary! Our food’s gonna glow! They haven’ done studies! They should have decided to rename it something way back in the beginning, like they did with MRIs and microwaves, and maybe we could have prevented some needless deaths. Welcome to the 21st century, everyone. And I say let companies advertise that they don’t use irradiation if they want, but I see no need to force companies to label. That’s ridiculous. If people are so damn fearful of technology that makes us all safer, let them grow their own damn food. Making them label it as if it’s something dangerous is only fear mongering. You claim that we don’t know the effects (which isn’t true, but whatever), but we DO know the effects of e-coli. In children and the weak, it shuts off their kidneys, and they die. I sure will love feeding my kids fresh spinach again.
@Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity: Yeah, my sister raises rats and several of them have died of mammary tumors. It’s very common.
@Pithlit: Specifically regarding your “no long-term studies” point: that seems to have become a rallying point for all kinds of whackjobs and anti-scientific luddites lately. It’s a favorite tactic of the anti-vaccine morons too. And in most cases where it’s waved around, it’s simply not true. I think that a lot of people are simply afraid of the rapid progress of science and technology, and react fearfully and defensively instead of informing themselves. Not all opinions on a scientific controversy are equally valid: those of non-scientists are barely worth even listening to at all. Now if only we could get the news media to actually weight coverage of things like this based on the scientific credibility of the person making a statement…
This could easily trigger the second coming of the organic food-pricing movement. Now retailers will get to charge 3x as much for non-irradiated greens, just like they do for a lot of organic produce.
I’m no scientist, so I’m not about to condemn or embrace irradiation. All I know is that a lot of people are strongly against the practice and they will pay out the nose to keep away from it.
@Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity: Yeah, exactly. My wife had a pet rat; all it did was sit around, chew cardboard, and eat mandarin oranges (like they were rat-sized watermelons, it was hilarious.) Guess what it died of? By the time it died there was more cancer in her rat than rat. ZOMG! Mandarin oranges cause cancer!
@johnva:
If I was offered a choice between an irradiated vegetable and a non-irradiated vegetable, I would choose the non-irradiated one. I’ve eaten (mostly) non-irradiated food all of my life and I’m healthy and happy. I don’t percieve a need to expose my food to lethal radiation, whether or not it is safe, or whether or not it can decrease my chances of eating bacteria from .001% to .0001%. Just because this additional processing step won’t kill me doesn’t mean it’s necessary or desirable for me or my family. Like I said, it’s a preference. I live in a free country and I should have a right to know and decide what I’m going to eat.
@AtomikB: I don’t believe anyone has said that you should be forced to eat irradiated food. Actually, you probably already do, without knowing it (even if it’s just spices). But your reasoning is rather poor, I have to say. You don’t actually think that you only have a 0.001% chance of “eating bacteria” when you eat something, do you??
@AtomikB:
actually, in most events, a reduction of ten times in magnitude is DEFINITELY enough to warrant a change in policy. (see airbags, seatbelts)
Let’s use your numbers:
A reduction in the exposure to virulent bacteria from .001% to .0001% can mean the difference to about 297,000 people. (Assuming the population of the United States is 300,000,000 people)
Factor in the quantity of aged and babies (1/3, to be conservative), and you’ve got about 99,000 people who wouldn’t be exposed to bacteria.
And this is based on your own “number”.
Maybe you need to think about this a little more.
@johnva:
I think it’s fine to irradiate food as long as it’s labeled as such, so that I can choose whether or not to eat it.
Obviously I eat all kinds of bacteria all the time, most of which is harmless. My point is that I’ve never gotten sick from e-coli or salmonella or other dangerous bacteria in my vegetables, and the odds are that I never will — even if I never eat an irradiated vegetable. So this additional safety step is largely unneccesary and I want the option to eat food that hasn’t been irradiated.
My concern is that once irradiation is declared “safe” by the FDA (and I’m sure it is safe, in the sense it won’t make me sick or dead), food processing companies will irradiate everything and not be required to label it. If that were the case, I would no longer have a choice as to whether my food is irradiated or not, because I would have know way of knowing.
I just want to have a choice, and like I said before, I shouldn’t have to justify my preferences to the FDA or anyone else.
There will always be studies that say it’s gonna kill you right away and studies that say you’ll live 20 years longer. The trick is to look at the mass of literature. That’s why the WHO has accepted this as safe.
.
For those insisting on long term human studies, that’s not likely because no matter how long the study is, people will say, “Well, it’s not long enough”. If they have a sixty year study, then they’ll say they need multigenerational studies.
.
I also hope people compare the mysterious danger that has been mildly suggested by some studies to the very real danger based on the contamination that exists today. A danger that is absolutely proven and has a body count.
I like labelling. However, that makes it really easy for a vocal minority to use FUD tactics to scare people off of this. Which is what the majority of irradiation oppoents use. (luckily there has been a more rational discussion here) If the scare-mongers succeed in limiting sales of this, they won’t use and food will stay as dangerous as it is now.
@AtomikB: If I was offered a choice between an irradiated vegetable and a non-irradiated vegetable, I would choose the non-irradiated one.
So let’s label the non-irradiated food, and make sure the label is a big biohazard symbol, and make sure there’s a big red alert informing you that, according to the Surgeon General, eating non-irradiated vegetables can expose you to a significantly greater risk of food-borne illnesses.
How can you object? I mean, since it’s just about informing the consumer, right? Allowing them to make their own choices? Fearmongering with big scary labels has nothing at all to do with it, right?
People should avoid drinking organic unpasteurized apple juice and cider. Pickers are not suppose to pick up apples that are on the ground since deer and other animal fecal mater (do do for those who live in Tennessee) on the ground will contaminate the apples. “Mexicans” are paid by the basket. So there are rules and there are what people do.
To be safe, irradiate them before processing to eliminate the danger of another outbreak.
What nobody here is stopping to think about is just how much irradiated food will help the environment. Just think about the energy and materials savings we’ll reap with the obsolescence of the refrigerator light bulb!
@Parapraxis: In reality, the risk posed by foodborne illness far exceeds any risk caused by food irradiation (which, if you believe the scientists, is mostly an imaginary risk). But yeah, he was just making up numbers to justify his gut feeling.
@crashfrog:
Food should be labeled with the goal of informing consumers, not scaring them. If they want to label irradiated food as “certified sterile” or something less scary, that would be fine. If they want to label non-irradiated veggies “may contain live hazardous bacteria”, that would be perfectly accurate, and would not deter me from buying that vegetable. I already know that washing and cooking food is frequently necessary to make it safe.
My safety is ultimately my own responsibility — so I should be able to make my own choices about what kind of food I want to eat, based on accurate information about that food.
@AtomikB: You’re still using very poor reasoning. The mere fact that you think you haven’t gotten sick from one of these illnesses is not a valid public health argument (actually, you may well have gotten mildly sick with one of them in the past without knowing it); it’s anecdotal evidence. Over the whole of the population, irradiation likely provides a large net safety benefit.
Look, I’m just questioning your reasoning. Why do you care about whether there is a “choice” if you don’t think there is anything wrong with irradiation from a safety standpoint, AND you believe that it could actually reduce the chance of foodborne bacterial infection? I think producers should be perfectly free NOT to use irradiation, if they choose not to. But I think it should be more along the lines of how organic food or rGBH-free dairy labeling works now: the companies that don’t do it should be free to label their product that way, but we shouldn’t force scary radiation labels on everything else.
@AtomikB: We could extend your logic about “choice” via labeling. Should producers have to disclose every aspect of how food was produced and handled at every step in the process, on the label, in the name of “choice”? Even if all the scientific evidence shows that a lot of those practices are totally benign from a safety standpoint? For example, should they have to list detailed data on what animals were fed, in case someone cares about that? Or what exact organic or non-organic fertilizer or pesticides were used to raise vegetables? What refrigerant was used to cool the trucks that shipped it to your grocery store? Whether the trucks used biodiesel fuel or not? You get my point. Sometimes labelling is unnecessary, AS THE DEFAULT OPTION, when scientists have shown that a practice is perfectly safe and a good idea from a food-safety perspective. Companies would still be perfectly free to label their food as irradiation-free if they think there is a market for people who want to pay more for that or whatever.
@johnva: Yep. You and I are on the same page, my friend. It’s such a shame when it holds us back. It makes me want to bang my head against the wall. It’s hard for me not to go a little overboard in my rants, sometimes. I don’t think it does any good to go all out on personal attacks or anything. But it’s really hard sometimes. This would more than likely save many lives.
@johnva:
I wasn’t aware that I needed a reason to want a choice! I thought freedom of choice was universally recognized as an American value, and a goal in and of itself.
I’m glad you brought up the labelling of “certified organic” food. This type of food is produced because many people prefer food raised without pesticides and other agricultural chemicals — even though these chemicals are generally recognized as safe and eaten by the majority of Americans every day. But it’s not a question of safety, it’s a question of the consumer’s preference.
It doesn’t matter what words are used to label irradiated or non-irradiated food (ideally they should use plain english not intended to frighten people), as long as consumers have the ability to distinguish one type of food from another.
@johnva: I wonder if more than a few might change their minds if they got as sick as I did with my recent bout of salmonella. I’ve never been so sick in my entire life. It was 7 days of pure hell, and I would give just about anything to never have to go through it again. If I weren’t a healthy 36 year old woman, it would have put me in the hospital and might have killed me. It may be another month before I fully regain my strength. In fact, I’m starting to suffer from joint pain, which is a possible complication of salmonella poising, and I have another follow up appointment with my doctor because of it. No fun.
@AtomikB: I’m all for choice, if people want it. And I like the idea of more information being available. But I don’t think the way to do that is to require warning labels on packaging. That’s why my position is that if someone wants to market their food as non-irradiated, then great! Go for it! I’d just prefer that the labeling not be enacted by the government as if irradiation were dangerous, when in fact the opposite is more likely (that non-irradiated food is more dangerous). The mere existence of a controversy (that is more political in nature than scientific) is not enough reason for the government to require labeling, in my opinion. Let’s say someone creates a political “controversy” over the religion of the workers who pick their tomatoes. For example, let’s say a group comes out and says that due to their interpretation of the Bible, they can’t eat tomatoes that have been touched by a non-Christian. Is the solution to this controversy to require all tomato producers to label their produce with the word “May have been handled by a non-Christian”? Or should the solution be that the people who care about this could try to market their own line of “Holy Tomatoes, untouched by heathen hands”?
As I said before, I don’t think labels on food should use scary language or give inaccurate information. In the interest of efficiency, it would probably be best to label the smallest amount of food possible. So in your “holy tomatoes” situation, only the non-heathen tomatoes should be labeled, since most tomatoes are not guaranteed to have been handled only by Christians.
This is already the case with “certified organic” vegetables, which are labeled as such, while vegetables grown conventionally with pesticides and everything are just “vegetables”. If they extend the defenition of “organically grown” to mean non-irradiated, that still gives me the choice I’m looking for. I’m satisfied as long as I have a way of knowing how the food was produced and processed, based on its labels.
It’s worth noting that many forms of cooking — grilling, for example — have been shown to produce known carcinogens. Irradiation has not. People who are worried about getting cancer from irradiated foods should be refusing to eat anything cooked at a high temperature, as well; perhaps eating only boiled foods. It’s a small risk but a much larger and more proven one than irradiation.
@AtomikB: Well, if they just “extend” the definition of “certified organic” to include “non-irradiated”, then that actually takes choice away from me. What if I wanted vegetables that were grown organically, but I’d prefer they be irradiated because irradiated vegetables are safer? Now we’ve lumped this stuff into an “all or nothing” choice, for no scientific reason at all.
I guess my main disagreement is that I think food SAFETY labeling requirements imposed by the government should be driven by science and not consumer demands. The organic label, BTW, is not purely a safety label, because safety is not the only or even primary reason people pick organic food. And anyway, the organic label proves my earlier point that labels should be voluntary. We don’t make all the “conventional” produce be labelled as “non-organic”. We instead ALLOW producers to voluntarily market their food as organic. We should make irradiation the default (since the scientists say it’s safer) and then allow producers to label as non-irradiated if they so choose.
Food irradiation is not the same as microwaving. Microwaves (cell phones, ovens, etc) are much, much lower frequency and non-ionizing radiation. They only produce heat, although the heat itself may cause problems. Irradiation for food sterilization is done with ionizing radiation, which strips electrons and kills at the cellular level.
Non-ionizing radiation freqs (TV, Radio, cell phones, WiFi, microwave ovens) < ultraviolet light
Ionizing radiation freqs(X rays, Gamma radiation) >= ultraviolet light
@Ragman: Yes, it’s not the same type of radiation, and it’s good to clarify. But the real question is whether it produces anything dangerous in the food, and the scientific consensus appears to be that it does not.
@Xerloq: *waves hand* Where do you live? Eme – nardo218 at yahoo dot com.
@Trai_Dep: The reason they’re doing this to lettuce is that even if you wash lettuce in bleach, they won’t be clean because the leaves can suck bacteria and viruses up into the veins.
If I had a choice on which veggie, then yes. Chances are that I won’t know what I’m eating.
Do not want.
Instead of solving the problem that was created by large mass production produce farming and commingling crops they throw another layer of processing on top that we really do not know the long term outcome of.
So great, now there will be yet another thing I will have to pay a premium for to avoid a crappy downgrade.
@bohemian: I agree that mass production farming is the underlying problem. I disagree that food irradiation is a “downgrade”.
I got news for you all…gamma radiation is capable of knocking protons out of an atom. That’s right, converting matter from one type to another. Think about that when you eat gamma radiated food. What exactly are you eating?
@bohemian: Exactly.
Look, mutant-lovers, it’s not that all of us are afraid of radiation – or growth hormones in milk – per se. It’s that these “features” are analogues for practices that likely mean the cows or spinach is processed in a way we don’t like rewarding.
Factory-farmed, abscess-ridden, antibiotic-drunk cows chained in 4×10′ stalls from birth until they die, for instance. Or produce weighted down so heavily with feces that some companies don’t bother to clean.
It doesn’t matter how they sterilize the feces coating the plants – I’d be equally unenthusiastic about eating shit if they shook it in a martini tumbler filled with Gray Goose. I just don’t like eating shit. Even clean shit.
Yeah, I’m strange that way.
Rather than fixing the problem, or mitigating it, they want me to give them money for polishing it to a luminescent sheen. But. It’s. Still. Shit.
I’m leery of irradiation, mainly because I’ve not had the time to research it. If it’s damaging the DNA of bacteria, what happens when a bacterium doesn’t get damaged enough and a new mutant strain is produced?
Similarly, what does irradiation do to the starches, proteins, and amino acids found in the food? I’d assume it damages those as well. Just what I want my body doing — assimilating damaged nutrients.
@johnva: and @bohemian: Fully agree. The problem lies in the mass-production (and no regard for any food safety technique which might cut into profits, like shutting down the plant more than 1x/day for cleaning).
Let’s fix the contamination issues first… E.coli comes from fecal matter, which most likely comes from the close proximity of large livestock farms to vegetable farms. Filter the effluent from the livestock farms AND filter the water used for irrigation and you’ll see this mess go away. BUT, with the agriculture industry measuring profits down to the thousandth of a cent, good lucky getting them to pay for it.
@FLConsumer:
[i]
If it’s damaging the DNA of bacteria, what happens when a bacterium doesn’t get damaged enough and a new mutant strain is produced?[/i]
Ultraviolet rays do that to bacteria all the time. In fact, that’s what’s happening to your skin at this very moment.
Please tell me its not true, but I heard that the sun actually spreads radiation through out the solar system! Say it ain’t so Joe!
I see the birth of a new super hero story here….
@AtomikB: I thought freedom of choice was universally recognized as an American value, and a goal in and of itself.
Unless, apparently, we’re talking about the freedom of suppliers to choose not to label their irradiated foods, out of concern of consumers like you with their irrational, fear-based preferences.
@FLConsumer: Similarly, what does irradiation do to the starches, proteins, and amino acids found in the food? I’d assume it damages those as well. Just what I want my body doing — assimilating damaged nutrients.
You should do some research about what happens in the stomach and intestine. Irradiation is nothing compared to the damage your own body inflicts on things like proteins and DNA. Starches don’t even survive your mouth; your saliva begins destroying them immediately.
Rather than fixing the problem, or mitigating it, they want me to give them money for polishing it to a luminescent sheen. But. It’s. Still. Shit.
Christ, what do you think dirt is? Worm shit.
There’s going to be the shit of something on some of your food. You need to get over it (and wash produce before you eat it.) The belt-and-suspenders approach, here, of food safety practices and irradiation are to make sure that the shit on your food doesn’t kill someone. But a world with no shit on food of any kind is simply not going to happen – not while crops need to be grown outside, in dirt. (I guess you can pay out the nose for hydroponics, if you want.)