This is typical in america, treat the symptom (irradiate pathogens) instead of eradicating the disease (sanitary conditions on corporate farms). That formula is applied to most problems in america and look what a mess it has made. Perhaps everyone should stop and think about the fact that you are eating food that has been exposed to radiation, regardless of the claim of safety by the industry that stands to profit from that claim.
Monkof IL10:19AM September 06, 2008
Sanitary food manufacturing practices are a major concern amongst food processing companies, but simply having a "clean" processing facility is not enough. Think about the challenges these companies face. Fruits and vegetables are grown on farms where, for many months, bugs are crawling on the food, animals or birds are doing their business on the food, and the food is literally growing in the dirt! From the food companies' perspectives, they're starting with very dirty and possibly very contaminated food.
Do you think a simple water rinse is sufficient to guarantee that all of the millions of pounds of produce grown in the US is clean enough to eat? And do you believe that if you wash all of your fruits and vegetables with water that you will always be safe? Think about what might happen when an elderly person or a child (populations most vulnerable to food-borne illness) fail to thoroughly rinse even a single tomato...pepper...potato?
When the safety of ALL food is critical, and the safety of EVERY individual is critical, our food supply will be safer overall when we employ as many safe, proven methods of reducing pathogenic organisms in our food as possible.
Kathrynof IL1:01AM September 06, 2008
Missing in this piece was balanced information to help counter the many misconceptions about food irradiation, fears about its safety and, most importantly, information of the benefits for all of us trying to keep ourselves and our loved ones safer.
This article offers more comprehensive and science-based information:
Yes, I do agree with some points that Mark of WA makes where he says >>>So grow food with anitbiotics, pesticides, herbicides, and growth hormone in an effort to increase production. THEN, rather than realize that the unhealthy environment you just created actually created the bacterian problem, go ahead and irradiate the food. It must be acceptable to eat cow feces now - just so long as the bacteria is killed?<<<. I do believe that sanitation laws don't neccesarily need to be changed, but rather monitered ENFORCED!!! The technology is not new, though. But when I do want to use ground beef, every added safety is important to me. I also wash everything and cook to the recommended temp. I don't want to be a person that in hind sight, with a sick child saying "I should've done this or that"! No one wants to eat fecec for crying out loud, but neither do we want to die from it.
sylviaof CA5:09PM September 05, 2008
...people are willing to forego cleanliness and put radiation into their food instead. I am even more surprised by people's willingness to subject their growing children to an untested and new technology. Their own tests concluded that it takes nutirents away. Not good/
So grow food with anitbiotics, pesticides, herbicides, and growth hormone in an effort to increase production. THEN, rather than realize that the unhealthy environment you just created actually created the bacterian problem, go ahead and irradiate the food. It must be acceptable to eat cow feces now - just so long as the bacteria is killed?
This is just a way to make food safety sloppier.
Markof WA4:21PM September 05, 2008
schwans foods also sell irradiated ground beef. It's very good and I feel safer serving my kids their meals. It is a little more expencive, but the safety aspect of it makes it well worth it!
sylviaof CA3:26PM September 05, 2008
It's not any residual radiation which could be an issue - it's how the radiation has affected the nucleic acids in the meat. Irradiation can cause all sorts of changes to the bases - dimerization, oxidation, etc. Because there are salvage pathways for purines (dA/dG) and pyrimidines (dC/dT), these altered bases could be incorporated into your own DNA when you ingest that irradiated meat. If that's the case, they could lead to mutations in your DNA because these base lesions do not base pair as normal bases - e.g. 8-oxo-dG which leads to a C to T mutation after a cell cycle. Normally, your body is able to discriminate between the proper and mutated bases - but who knows whether these salvage pathways will continue to be able to discriminate between the correct and the base lesions if they're overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of mutations present in irradiated meat?
The Agribusiness folks would love to have this technology used because it would allow them to cut costs on maintaining clean animal farms and slaughter houses. That's fine - but the public should be given the choice as to whether they'd like to subject their kids to something that's been given so little study - the meats should be labeled as irradiated. However, they're pushing for a lack of any labeling requirements so you won't even know.
Johnof VA2:53PM September 05, 2008
This is a very thoughtful piece -- kudos to U.S. News! So many articles I've seen in the past have been so alarmist.
I am a mom of two kids and I buy irradiated prodcuts whenever I can get my hands on them. They give me the extra margin of safety I'm looking for. And I have NEVER detected any funny tastes.
I hope more people will try these prodcuts. Maybe if more consumers buy them, more products will be offered irradiated and we won't have to look so far to find them!
Maryland Momof MD2:34PM September 05, 2008
The fresh produce industry has officially lost its innocence with the recent Food and Drug Administration’s green lighting of irradiating spinach and lettuce. But the ruling, driven by an anxious public over tainted food and industries lost revenues, misses the point and may cause more suffering than it seeks to relieve. As counterintuitive as it sounds, why has nobody asked what appears to be a reasonable and obvious question: do we really want to kill "all" the bugs on a leaf of spinach as a result of the friendly fire of a kill step like irradiation. If we had had a similar discussion in the 1940s when British bacteriologist Alexander Fleming (the discover of penicillin) warned the overuse of antibiotics (a kill step) might lead to antibiotic resistant strains, we might have approached and managed the use of antibiotics differently. By wiping out
"all" the bystander bugs from the ecological wonderland of our fresh produce – and there are billions on a single leaf of spinach - might we be removing some time-honored benign microbiological friends that our immune system has come to depend upon for a properly functioning immune system?
Mounting evidence suggests so. There exist a high probability that we are trading one form of suffering for another. In this case, foodborne illness for increasing autoimmune and inflammatory disorders as a result of removing “even more” bugs from our hyper-hygienic westernized diet. Failure of imagination is not a public health strategy.
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Monk of IL 10:19AM September 06, 2008
Kathryn of IL 1:01AM September 06, 2008
Rene of IA 9:22PM September 05, 2008
sylvia of CA 5:09PM September 05, 2008
Mark of WA 4:21PM September 05, 2008
sylvia of CA 3:26PM September 05, 2008
John of VA 2:53PM September 05, 2008
Maryland Mom of MD 2:34PM September 05, 2008
Jeff Leach of LA 2:30PM September 05, 2008