Hooked On Nuclear Irradiation Too?

Intensive production methods provide a convenient pretext for the nuclear irradiation of food.

The food and nuclear industries, with strong government support, have capitalised on recent outbreaks of pathogenic Escherichia coli 0157 meat poisoning to mobilise public acceptance of large scale food irradiation. Already, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is allowing the use of high-level radiation to `treat' beef, pork, poultry, eggs, vegetables, fruit, flour and spices, while the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) proposes the introduction of irradiation of imported fruit and vegetables.

Caving in to powerful corporate industry interests, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have recently proposed to sanitise the FDA's already weakened labelling requirements for irradiated food by eliminating the word `irradiated' in favour of `electronic pasteurisation'.[1] This is based on technologies developed for President Reagan's `Star Wars' programme. It uses highly costly linear accelerator 'E-beam' technology, which bombards food with a stream of electrons travelling at the speed of light. However, the proposed electronic pasteurisation label is a euphemistic absurdity, especially since the FDA's approved meat radiation dosage of 450,000 rads is approximately 150 million times greater than that of a chest X-ray, besides circumventing consumers' fundamental right to know.

Furthermore, the new labelling initiative is reckless. Irradiated meat is a

very different product from cooked meat. Whether irradiated by linear accelerators or radioactive isotope pellets, the resulting ionising radiation produces highly reactive free radicals and peroxides from unsaturated fats. In 1997, US Army analyses revealed major differences between volatile chemicals formed during irradiation or cooking meat.[2] Levels of the carcinogen benzene in irradiated beef were found to be some ten-fold higher than cooked beef. Additionally, high concentrations of six poorly characterised `unique radiolytic chemical products' admittedly `implicated as carcinogens or carcinogenic under certain conditions,' were also identified.'

Based on these striking changes in the chemistry of irradiated meat, FDA's 1980 Irradiated Food Committee explicitly warned that safety testing should be based on concentrated extracts of irradiated foods, rather than on whole foods, to maximise the concentration of radiolytic products.[3] This would enable development of the sufficient sensitivity essential for routine safety testing. In 1984, Epstein and Gofman more specifically urged that `stable radiolytic products could be extracted from irradiated foods by various solvents which could then be concentrated and subsequently tested. Until such fundamental studies are undertaken, there is little scientific basis for accepting industry's assurances of safety'.[4] In an accompanying editorial comment, the FDA was quoted as admitting that: `It is nearly impossible to detect (and test radiolytic products) with current techniques,' on the basis of which the agency's claims of safety and regulatory abdication still persist.[5]

While refusing to require standard toxicological and carcinogenicity testing of concentrated extracts of radiolytic products from irradiated meat and other foods, the FDA instead has relied on five studies selected from 441 published prior to the early 1980s, on which its claims of safety still remain based. However, the chair of the FDA Irradiated Food Task Committee which reviewed these studies insisted that none were adequate by 1982 standards,[6] and even less so by the 1990s.[7] Furthermore, detailed analysis of these studies revealed that all were grossly flawed and non-exculpatory.[8]

These results are hardly surprising since a wide range of independent studies prior to 1986 clearly identified mutagenic and carcinogenic radiolytic products in irradiated food, and confirmed evidence of genetic toxicity in tests on irradiated food.[9] Studies in the 1970s, by India's National Institute of Nutrition, reported that feeding freshly radiated wheat to monkeys, rats, mice and to a small group of malnourished children induced gross chromosomal abnormalities in blood or bone marrow cells, and mutational damage in the rodents.[10]

Food irradiation results in major micronutrient losses, particularly vitamins A, C, E, and the B complex.[11] As admitted by the USDA Agriculture Research Service, these losses are synergistically increased by cooking, resulting in `empty calorie' food;[12] this is a concern of major importance for malnourished populations. Radiation has also been used to clean up food unfit for human consumption, such as spoiled fish, by killing odorous contaminating bacteria.

While the USDA is strongly promoting meat and poultry irradiation, it has been moving to deregulate and privatise the industry by promoting a self-policing Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) control program.[13] In late 2000, the agency will start a rulemaking process to privatise meat inspection. Moreover, the US Department of Energy (DOE) continues its decades long aggressive promotion of food irradiation as a way of reducing disposal costs of spent military and civilian nuclear fuel by providing a commercial market for caesium nuclear wastes.

Irradiation facilities using isotope pellets pose risks of nuclear accidents to communities nationwide, from the hundreds of facilities envisaged for the potentially enormous radiation market; in contrast to nuclear power stations, these facilities are small, minimally regulated, unlikely to be secure, and require regular replenishment of cobalt (Co-60) or caesium (Cs-137) isotopes, entailing nationwide transportation hazards. Furthermore, linear accelerators, besides plants using radioactive isotopes, pose grave hazards to workers and are subject to virtually no regulation.[9,14]

The track record of the irradiation industry is, at best, unimpressive. Robert Alvarez, former DOE Senior Policy Advisor, recently warned that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission files are bulging with unreported documents on radioactive spills, worker over-exposure, and off-site radiation leakage.[15] Strangely, the Environmental Protection Agency has still failed to require an Environmental Impact Statement prior to the siting of food irradiation facilities.

The focus of the radiation and agribusiness industries is directed to the highly lucrative cleanup of contaminated food rather than to preventing contamination at its source.[16] However, E. coli 0157 food poisoning can be significantly prevented by reducing overcrowding and fly control. Infection rates could be further reduced by feeding hay, rather than the standard unhealthy starchy grain diet, for seven days prior to slaughter.[17] Preventing water contamination from feed lot run off, incriminated in the recent outbreak of E. coil 0157 poisoning in Walkerton, Ontario[18], would also help, as run off will remain a continuing threat even if all meat is irradiated.

Pre-slaughter, post-knocking and post-evisceration sanitation at meat packing plants is highly effective for reducing carcass contamination rates.[16] Testing pooled carcasses for E. coli 0157 and Salmonella contamination is economical, practical, and rapid. The expense of producing healthy meat would be trivial compared to the high costs of irradiation, including possible nuclear accidents, which would be passed on to consumers. Additional high costs are likely to result from an anticipated international ban on the imports of irradiated US food, and also from losses of tourist revenues.

We charge that support of the `electronically pasteurised' label by the food and radiation industries, governmental agencies, and Congress, is a camouflaged denial of citizen's fundamental right to know. Rather than sanitising the label in response to special interests, Congress should focus on a return to sound animal husbandry and not allow the irradiation of the nation's food supply. In the ultimate analysis this would mean returning to small-scale, low-tech, extensive methods of production; via which animals would be subjected to far less stressful conditions.

REFERENCES

[1] Congress Pressures FDA For Softer Labeling Of Irradiated Foods. FDA Week, p. 9-10, May 12, 2000.

[2] Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, Evaluation of The Health Aspects of Certain Compounds Found in Irradiated Beef. Report to the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, Bethesda, MD, August 1977.

[3] U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Recommendations for Evaluating the Safety of Irradiated Food. Final Report of FDA's Irradiated Food Committee. Washington, D.C., July 1980.

[4] Epstein, S. S., and Gofman, J.W. Irradiation of food. Science 223:1354, 1984.

[5] Sun, M. Science 223:1354, 1984.

[6] van Gemert, M. Memorandum Re: Final Report of the Task Group for the Review of Toxicology Data on Irradiated Food. April 9,1982.

[7] van Gemert, M. Letter to New Jersey Assemblyman John Keller, October 19, 1993.

[8] Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program and the Cancer Prevention Coalition. A Broken Record: How the FDA Legalized and Continues to Legalize Food Irradiation Without Testing it for Safety. Special Report, October 2000.

[9] Piccioni, R. Food irradiation: contaminating our food. Ecologist 18(2):48-55, 1988.

[10] Vijayalaxmi, and Srikantia, S. G. A review of the studies on the wholesomeness of irradiated wheat conducted at the National Institute of Nutrition, India. Radiat. Phys. Chem. 34(6):941-952, 1989.

[11] Murray, D.R. Biology of Food Irradiation. RSP Research Studies Press Ltd., Taunton, Somerset, England, 1990.

[12] Food Chemical News, Irradiation compounds vitamin loss from cooking, ARS Reports. November 10,1986, p. 42.

[13] USDA Food Safety Inspection Service, Irradiation of Red Meat: A Complication of Technical Data for its Authorization and Control. International Consultative Group on Food Irradiation, August, 1996.

[14] Trager, E.A. Review of events at large pool-type irradiators. Office of Analysis and Evaluation of Operational Data, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C., March, 1989.

[15] Alvarez, R. Food irradiation: 50 years of hollow promises. Bull. Atom. Sci. 2000, in press.

[16] Elder, R. O. et al. Correlation of enterohemorrhagic E.coli 0157 prevalence in feces, hides and carcasses of beef cattle during processing. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 97(7):2999-3003, 2000.

[17] Diaz-Gonzalez, E et al. Science 281:1666-1668, 1998.

[18] Analysis of Ontario E.coli Walkerton pollution disaster. The Gallon Environmental Letter, Montreal, Quebec, May 2000.

Irradiated food and the global agenda By Stephanie Roth

Food irradiation exposes food to gamma radiation, x-rays or radioactive isotopes to stop the ripening of plant food and to kill bacteria that contaminate food. The process involves the use of two deadly substances; cobalt-60 and caesium-137; largely obtained taken from nuclear waste.

It is common knowledge that the push for food irradiation has come from the nuclear establishment and the main players streamlining legislation for food irradiation have been the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Both the FAO and WHO insist that food irradiation makes more `safe' food available to the world's hungry. According to the WHO, ineffective regulation has in many countries overwhelmingly contaminated the food chain with pathogens such as Salmonella, Listeria or E. coli 0157 and the cost of remedying this at its very root would be enormous. Food irradiation, it argues, reduces the incidence of food-borne diseases. In the seventies both the FAO and WHO joined forces with the IAEA to form the Joint Expert Committee on Food Irradiation (JECFI).

In 1983, the mighty Codex Alimentarius Commission -- which sets food safety standards for more than 160 nations and 97 per cent of the world's population -- adopted an JECFI conclusion that set out `safe' levels for food irradiation. The conclusion was reached despite the fact that no comprehensive studies had been conducted on the long-term impacts of a diet of irradiated food.

The Codex's raison d'etre is to streamline international rules for trade in food; trade that is largely controlled by giant trans-national corporations. This inevitably means overriding national and local restrictions; including labelling. Unsurprisingly, national Codex committees are made-up of members and consultants of global food companies. Tom Billy, the current head of the Codex Committee is equally responsible for deregulating the US meat industry; he is the Chief of the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service. In 1997, the WHO decided to scrap the ceiling for irradiated food altogether, stating that `the actual amount of ionising radiation applied is of secondary consideration ... the result is the same -- the food is safe and wholesome and nutritionally adequate.'

Put into perspective, and with multiple food scares as a `handy' excuse, fresh fruits, vegetables, spices and red meat were given the `OK' to be irradiated by the US FDA in spring last year.

Over in the UK, the situation isn't much better. Whilst Trading Standards Officers found in 1995 that 12 per cent of the food available had been irradiated, the Independent Commission for Research and Information on Radioactivity found that the non-labelling of irradiated food is widespread in Europe. To make matters worse, in September 1999 the European Commission (EC) agreed that all member states must permit trade in irradiated food. The EC allows irradiation for mechanically deboned chicken meat, chicken offal, peeled shrimp, frog legs, cereals, herbs and spices. Worst of all though is the WTO's current push for a global standard on food sanitation and sterilisation that includes food irradiation. Whilst for now, individual countries can still choose whether or not to allow the import of irradiated food, under the WTO's Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPM), such choice will no longer exist. Under the terms of that agreement, governments will have justify on `scientific grounds', why a product should be exempted. However, with national -- the UK lifted its ban in 1991 -- and international endorsement of irradiated food; markets will inevitably become flooded with such poisoned food. In the face of this intolerable cynicism, the public must react as quickly and strongly as it has done over genetically modified food.

Samuel S Epstein is Emeritus Professor in Environmental Medicine at the School of Public Health at Illinois University and Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition.

Wenonah Hauter is director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Programme.

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