[Dryerase] Madison Insurgent - Nov/Dec articles - story #8

[the madison insurgent]

Food irradiation: Nuking food for profit
by John E. Peck

	Hidden inside the recently passed 2002 Farm Bill –
unbeknownst to most consumers, farmers, and taxpayers
– was a provision (Section 1079E) granting the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration the power to approve any
technology capable of killing pathogens as a form of
"pasteurization." Another provision (Section 442) goes
even further, forbidding the U.S. Department of
Agriculture from restricting distribution of
irradiated foods through mandated national school
lunch and child nutrition programs. 
	Corporate agribusiness has long awaited such
provisions, so they can circumvent consumer warning
labels and sidestep clean-up of factory farm
conditions. Corporate food irradiators now have access
to the nation’s entire food supply. Test marketing of
irradiated burgers began at several Dairy Queen
restaurants in Minnesota over the summer. Companies
such as Schwan’s and Wegmen’s now sell irradiated meat
– much of which comes through Chicago-based Sure-Beam,
a spin-off of defense contractor Titan Corp. Sure-Beam
claims irradiated food keeps NASA astronauts healthy
and that its electron beams use exactly the same
electricity as a microwave oven or television set. As
reported in The New York Times (10/27/2002), the
company can now dump whatever mystery meat remains
onto children’s school lunch trays by year’s end, at
taxpayer expense. 
	This drive towards ionizing radiation of food is
actually part of a larger corporate campaign to shift
food production to the global South. In fact, USDA
officials claim irradiation is "absolutely necessary"
for future global food trade; it extends the
shelf-life of produce, kills pathogens and other
pests, and even masks the contamination/putrefaction
of meat – making it appealing for long distance
shipment. Brazil is the leader in food irradiation,
with 11 operating ionization plants and another 21
under construction. Irradiated food is already
available in 33 countries, and includes everything
from spices to tropical fruit to beans.
	Whole irradiated foods sold in U.S. grocery stores
are now required to bear the "radura" irradiation
symbol – a green flower in a broken circle (strikingly
similar to the logo of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency) that can be as small as a
fingernail. But no consumer warning label is required
for irradiated ingredients mixed into other items –
such as baby food, frozen lasagna, or fruit juice – or
for entrees served in restaurants, hospitals, and
schools. Many people already eat irradiated foods on a
daily basis, without their consent or even awareness.
	Another powerful proponent of food irradiation is the
nuclear industry. As early as the 1970s, the U.S.
Department of Energy advocated food irradiation under
its "Byproduct Utilization Program." Conventional food
irradiation uses cobalt 60 and cesium 137 – both
nuclear waste byproducts – to generate high-energy
gamma rays. 
	In a typical facility, a human operator moves
aluminum food racks into a chamber with six-foot thick
walls and then exposes the target to a rack of cobalt
60 "pencils" lifted out of a water pool. A more recent
innovation uses an "e beam" from a particle
accelerator. Titan Corp., which created the "e beam"
idea from its ongoing Star Wars research, receives 80
percent of its revenue from U.S. taxpayers through DOE
and the Pentagon. The University of Wisconsin itself
holds $53,000 worth of Titan stock in its Trust Fund"
(www.uwsa.edu/tfunds).
	The number of microbes killed by radiation depends
upon the time and length of exposure; 100 percent
mortality is rarely achieved. Irradiation does not
physically remove the manure, pus, vomit, and other
waste on food, either – nor can it prevent future
contamination from dirty utensils, cutting surfaces,
unwashed hands, etc. And the negative consequences for
"non-target organisms" are apparent – as witnessed by
the health impact on government workers in Washington
D.C. forced to handle irradiated mail in the wake of
post 9/11 anthrax attacks. Over 100 U.S. Postal
Service employees and 250 Congressional and Executive
Branch staffers are reported to have suffered a wide
variety of irradiation symptoms – from bloody noses
and chronic headaches, to skin lesions and tingling
sensations.
	Unlike normal cooking, when food is irradiated,
numerous chemical bonds are ruptured, leaving behind a
trail of free radicals, ions, and other radiolytic
byproducts. Some of these compounds are already known
to be dangerous to human health when ingested – such
as formaldehyde, formic acid, and benzene. Others are
only identified as "unique radiolytic products" –
including cyclobutanones such as 2-DCB – which are not
found naturally anywhere, only in irradiated foods.
There has been no federal safety testing and little
scientific investigation of URPs – despite the fact
that they are known to persist for up to a decade in
food, a time period in which experts fear is long
enough to trigger cancers and birth defects.
	Irradiation also destroys many vitamins, enzymes,
healthy bacteria, and other nutritional elements found
naturally in whole foods. The free radicals produced
by irradiation rupture cell membranes, mutate others,
and destroy vitamins. Given estimates that 40 percent
of people living in the United States take vitamin
supplements, food giants have a vested interest in
fortifying the same foods they degrade and marketing
nutritional supplements. Surveys have also shown that
irradiation reduces and distorts flavor. 
	But for agribusiness giants such as Smithfield,
Cargill/Excel, and Conagra, irradiation will let them
avoid costly meat recalls and evade the crisis of
rampant contamination in factory farming – including
recent outbreaks of E. coli, Listeria, and Salmonella
– due to hazardous farming practices.  
	Over 80 percent of the antibiotics used in
agriculture in the U.S. are for non-essential purposes
– such as medicated feed that stimulates growth
(www.keepantibioticsworking.com). This has led to the
emergence of strains of resistant bacteria because of
their widespread presence in our food chain and water
supply (due in part to runaway manure runoff from
factory farm operations). Irradiation exposure will
accelerate the evolution of more "super germs" – which
is why some of the staunchest opponents of irradiated
foods (and sub-therapeutic antibiotics) are
biologists, physicians, and nurses. 
	While it is technically illegal, many U.S.
agribusiness operators continue to feed farm animals
the remains of other animals, often in the form of
processed blood/bone meal supplements. This practice
is especially tempting for factory dairy farm
operators, who need higher protein in their feeding
regimen to compensate for the unnatural milk volumes
cranked out of cows injected with recombinant bovine
growth hormone (rBGH). In some cases, entrails of
slaughtered animals are even served back to others
"stuck in the queue" at slaughterhouses, easily
spreading prions, viruses, bacteria, fungus, mold, and
other pathogens between animals and across species. 
	Meat packing mergers and accelerated assembly lines
are two other clear factors behind the contamination
that irradiation is meant to "solve." One infected
steer tossed into a corporate hamburger grinder and
redistributed to fast food outlets nationwide can
easily kill scores of people in half a dozen states.
The deregulation and privatization of meat inspection
under the Clinton/Bush administrations has only made
the situation worse. 
	A recent exposé by Public Citizen revealed that the
USDA’s new "Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point"
meat sanitation program was a food safety joke. For
instance, the Cargil/Excel meatpacking plant,
responsible for an E. coli outbreak in Wisconsin that
killed one child and sickened 500 others, passed its
first two HACCP checks, but then during the 15 month
"holiday" between such mandated inspections, received
26 other citations for fecal contamination with no
regulatory action. A recent memo from the USDA Food
Safety Inspection Service leaked to the public
(11/2/02 New York Times) actually redefined "fecal
contamination" and warned inspectors that they would
be held personally accountable for the economic
consequences of halting meat production for food
safety concerns. 
	Grassroots efforts are now underway to mandate proper
labeling, build a consumer boycott against all
irradiated products, pressure school boards and other
elected officials to ban irradiated foodstuffs from
public institutions, and otherwise end this
technology. 
	As Michael Hart, a British farmer who visited
Wisconsin on a speaking tour last summer said, "I
don’t want to eat shit – raw, cooked or irradiated." 

The author can be reached at jepeck at students.wisc.edu.

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