Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen is urging Dr. Bernard Schwetz, acting commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to deny all pending applications to "treat" food with ionizing radiation until new and up-to-date toxicology tests on irradiated food are performed. In legalizing irradiation, the FDA relied on tests from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Conducting modern tests is critical, because among the pending applications is a request from the food industry to irradiate ready-to-eat foods, which comprise more than one-third of the typical American's diet.

Since 1983, the FDA has legalized the irradiation of numerous classes of food, including beef, poultry, pork, lamb, fruit, vegetables, eggs, juice and spices - at the equivalent radiation dose ranging from 33 million to 1 billion chest X-rays.

Although it has given the go-ahead for foods that comprise about half of the US food supply to be irradiated, the FDA has failed to determine a level of radiation to which food can be exposed and still be safe for human consumption, according to Public Citizen research detailed in the recent report, A Broken Record.

A copy of that report is available at:

http://www.citizen.org/cmep/rad-food/brokenrecord/brokenrecord.PDF

Additionally, the FDA has relied on decades-old tests that do not meet current scientific protocols designed to determine whether irradiated food could be toxic, or cause mutations or reproductive problems in the people who eat it.

The FDA has dismissed a vast body of scientific evidence suggesting that irradiated food may not be safe to eat.

Dozens of experiments conducted since the 1950s have revealed a variety of health problems in animals that have consumed irradiated food, including:

• premature death
  
• a rare form of cancer
  
• fatal internal bleeding
  
• chromosome aberrations
  
• stillbirths, nutritional deficiencies
  
• liver damage

Additionally, irradiation cannot kill the pathogen that causes "mad cow" disease, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization.

In a letter to Schwetz, available at:

http://www.citizen.org/cmep/rad-food/LetterDrSchwetz.htm

Public Citizen urged the FDA to deny the ready-to-eat food application, as well as requests from the food industry to irradiate crustaceans (such as shrimp, lobsters and crabs) and mollusks (such as oysters, clams, scallops, mussels, octopus and squid).

The FDA's record on food irradiation is a national embarrassment.

The time to go back to the drawing board is now.

Food irradiation is the process of exposing foods to ionizing radiation - gamma rays, electron beams, or X-rays - to kill bacteria, parasites, insects, or fungi that can cause spoilage or make people sick. Currently, it is used on just a small part of the food supply, such as many herbs and spices.

But major expansion of its use on other foods likely will occur in the future. Federal regulations since 1986 have required use of the label "Treated with Radiation" or "Treated by Irradiation" for irradiated foods, in addition to using a small "radura"symbol.

Rider language written by a few Senators and House members - and never the subject of a public hearing or debate - was attached to the Conference Report on the 2001 Agriculture Appropriations bill.

It seeks to force the Food and Drug Administration to replace the clear label on irradiated foods with a new and vague euphemism like "Cold Pasteurized."

The rider language is designed to serve the food and irradiation industries and to confuse, rather than inform, shoppers.

Irradiation may well improve food safety for consumers, but it should not substitute for good sanitation.

Whether you want to buy irradiated foods to protect a child or aging parent from E. coli O157:H7 bacteria or you want to avoid irradiated foods because of changes in taste, smell, texture, or nutritional value, confusing labels will reduce your ability to make that choice.