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The recent proposal by the Bush Administration
to allow irradiated ground beef into the National School Lunch
Program will endanger the
health of tens of millions of school children and
should be withdrawn immediately.
"The government's assertion that
irradiated food is safe for human consumption does not even
pass the laugh test," said Samuel
S. Epstein, M.D., emeritus professor of environmental
and occupational medicine at University of Illinois School
of Public Health, Chicago.
"Exposing
America's school children to the hazards of irradiated food
is reckless negligence, compounded by the absence of any warning
to parents".
Irradiated meat is a very different product
than natural meat. This is hardly surprising, as the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration's approved irradiation dosage
of 450,000 rads is approximately 150
million times greater than that of a chest x-ray.
Apart from high levels of benzene, new
chemicals known as "unique radiolytic products"
were identified in irradiated meat in US Army tests in 1977
and recognized as carcinogenic.
Later tests identified
other chemicals shown to induce genetic
toxicity.
In sharp contrast to FDA's claims of safety,
based on grossly inadequate testing which fails to meet the
agency's minimal standards and which were explicitly rebutted
by its own expert committees, there is well-documented scientific
evidence that eating irradiated
meat poses grave risks of cancer and genetic damage.
Irradiated meat is also highly susceptible
to cross-contamination with food poisoning bacteria.
Nevertheless, the meat and irradiation
industries, with FDA's complicity, are lobbying aggressively
to sanitize the agency's weak labeling requirements for irradiated
meat and other food by eliminating the word "irradiated"
in favor of "electronic (or cold) pasteurization".
This euphemistic
absurdity would circumvent consumer's fundamental right-to-know.
Furthermore,
irradiation
masks grossly unsanitary conditions in slaughterhouses and
meat processing plants.
Irradiation is thus a major disincentive
to decades-long overdue basic sanitary practices essential
for the prevention of Salmonella, E.coli 0157:h7, and other
pathogenic food poisoning. While irradiation kills most bacteria
in meat, pork and poultry, it does nothing to prevent gross
fecal and other contamination.
Warnings on the hazards of irradiated
food were endorsed in a recent publication, in the world's
leading peer-reviewed public health journal, by a wide range
of national and international experts including:
Dr. Neal
Barnard, President, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine,
Washington, D.C.; Dr. John Gofman, Emeritus Professor, Molecular
and Radiation Biology, University of California, Berkeley,
California; Dr. Jay M. Gould, Director, Radiation and Public
Health Project, U.S.A.; Dr. Vyvyan Howard, Professor of Pathology,
University of Liverpool, U.K.; Dr. David Kriebel, Professor
of Epidemiology, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Massachusetts;
Dr. Marvin Legator, Professor of Preventive Medicine, University
of Texas, Galveston, Texas; Dr. E. Lichter, Professor of Community
Medicine, University of Illinois Medical School, Chicago,
Illinois; Dr. William Lijinsky, former Director, Chemical
Carcinogenesis, Frederick Cancer Research Center, Maryland;
Dr. Sheldon Margen, Emeritus Professor of Public Health Nutrition,
University of California, Berkeley, California; Dr. Vicente
Navarro, Professor of Health and Public Policy, The Johns
Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, Professor of Political
and Social Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain; Dr.
Herbert Needleman, Professor of Pediatrics and Psychiatry,
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Dr. Robert
Rinehart, Emeritus Professor of Biology, San Diego State University,
California; Dr. George Tritsch, Cancer Research Scientist,
Roswell Park Memorial Institute, New York State Department
of Health, New York; Dr. Quentin Young, past President, American
Public Health Association, Chicago, Illinois; Dr. Joseph Mercola,
senior editor www.mercola.com
For more information on Irradiation, see
"PREVENTING
PATHOGENIC FOOD POISONING: SANITATION NOT IRRADIATION"
by Samuel S. Epstein (Cancer
Prevention Coalition) and Wenonah Hauter (Public
Citizen)
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