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by Dr. Samuel Epstein,
Cancer
Prevention Coalition
Bacterial food poisoning can be readily
prevented by long overdue
basic sanitary measures rather than by ultrahazardous
irradiation technologies.
The food and nuclear industries, with
strong government support, have capitalized on recent outbreaks
of pathogenic E.coli 0157 meat poisoning to mobilize public
acceptance of large scale food irradiation.
Already, the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) is allowing the use of high-level radiation to "treat"
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• vegetables |
• beef |
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• fruit |
• pork |
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•
flour |
•
poultry |
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• spices |
• eggs |
while the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA) proposes the imminent irradiation of
imported fruit and vegetables.
Caving in to powerful corporate industry
interests, both House and Senate Appropriations Committees
have recently proposed to sanitize the FDA's already weakened
labeling requirements for irradiated food by eliminating
the word "irradiated" in favor of "electronic
pasteurization" (1); this term was proposed
by the San Diego based Titan corporation, an erstwhile major
defense contractor using highly costly linear accelerator
"E-beam" technology, originally designed for President
Reagan's "Star Wars" program, which shoots food
with a stream of electrons travelling at the speed of light.
However, the proposed electronic pasteurization
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 labeling initiative
is reckless. Irradiated
meat is a very different product from cooked meat.
Whether irradiated by linear accelerators
or pelletized radioactive isotopes, the resulting ionizing
radiation produces highly reactive free radicals and peroxides
from unsaturated fats. U.S. Army analyses in 1977 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
tenfold higher than cooked beef. Additionally, high concentrations
of six poorly characterized "unique radiolytic chemical
products" admittedly "implicated as carcinogens
or carcinogenic under certain conditions," were also
identified (2).
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 maximize the concentration of radiolytic
products (3).
This would enable development of 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,
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,
FDA instead has relied on some five studies selected from
441 published prior to the early 1980's, on which its claims
of safety still remain based.
However, the chair of FDA's Irradiated
Food Task Committee which reviewed these studies insisted
that none were adequate by 1982 standards (6), and even
less so by the 1990's (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 1970's, 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 U.S. Department
of Agriculture's (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 privatize 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 privatize meat inspection.
Moreover, the 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 cesium nuclear wastes.
Irradiation facilities using pelletized
isotopes 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 cesium (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 largely prevented by long overdue improved sanitation.
Feedlot pen sanitation, including reducing overcrowding,
drinking water disinfection and fly control, would drastically
reduce cattle infection rates.
Moreover, E. coli 0157 infection rates
could be virtually eliminated by feeding hay, rather than
the standard unhealthy starchy grain diet, for seven days
prior to slaughter (17). Sanitation would also prevent water
contamination from feed lot run off, incriminated in the
recent outbreak of E. coli 0157 poisoning in Walkerton,
Ontario (18); run off will remain a continuing threat even
if all meat was 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 sanitary 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 U.S. food, and also from losses of tourist revenues.
We charge that support of the "electronically
pasteurized" label by the food and radiation industries,
governmental agencies, and Congress, is a camouflaged denial
of citizen's fundamental right to know. Rather than sanitizing
the label in response to special interests, Congress should
focus on sanitation and not irradiation of the nation's
food supply.
International
Journal of Health Services, Volume 31, Number 1, 2001
For more information, visit Dr. Epstein's
Cancer Prevention
Coalition at www.preventcancer.com.
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