Irradiated Foods

I'll have to go dig out all the info from some recent research I've seen. The basic line is, irradiation poses little or no KNOWN health risks. The radiation amount used is so small, it does not appear to have any potential for increased risk in humans. The only problem I see, is there may be something going on we cannot detect. Howevewr, I am a firm believer in irradiation, as the basic structure of the product is not altered in any way. This is a great thread, and I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone has to say about this.

I don't believe that irradiated food is harmful at all. In fact, I believe it could diminish the instances of food borne pathogens.

Genetically altered foods, on the other hand, I just don't know and don't think anybody else does either. It seems to me that scientists are screwing around with something that has the potential for being very dangerous, IMHO.

There is not necessarily a linear relationship between genetic materials. What I mean by this is that splicing certain genetic material into one organism and getting certain results does not mean that if it is done with different material that you would necessarily get the same or similar results. In other words, it is entirely unpredictable. God knows what you might get.

I guess this is the best forum to address this issue, so here goes...
There is a lot of emotional information being circulated about the dangers of irradiated foods. Having been on the suffering end of bad food poisoning due to recalled cream cheese as well as other foods, I tend to think irradiation is not as dangerous as many people are led to believe and the benefits would certainly outweigh those dangers.
Maybe Dick, with data on eco-toxicology would like to clear a few misconceptions?
Also, what do other members know and believe about this issue?

[lynne]

Well, FoodNFoto, being a Chapel Hill-ite who hung out at Weaver Street and Well Spring, you probably know the answer to my question...

I think we need to get back to have real fruits and vegetables that have not been tampered with! I want tomatoes that actually taste lke tomatoes! Not a round pink thing with mealy texture and no flavour. Nothing drives me crazier than to go to a good restaurant and get a salad with no flavour because the ingredients are either so mass produced that nothing has flavour -- or items are so out of season that ditto applies!

OK, little off subject but...if I had to choose, I'd go for irradiated over genetically altered, and I know that they currently say that no problems exist, but 5, 10 years from now...

Here is a site that discusses the Genetically Modified Food question:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/Scienc..._Modified_Food

[This message has been edited by Crudeau (edited 01-24-2001).]

[shroomgirl]

Monsanto is working on flavor inhancers as we type....do you believe this shtuff?????

Do you know who owns the majority of the seed companies????Guess whose been buying them up for 20 years, quietly putting them out of business.....it just gets more scarey.

There is a real nasty taste in my mouth when I start finding out more and more that has been happening for years now....FDA and USDA are not watching out for our well being actually I trully believe they have been bought out....there is a rotating door between our gov't and high paying chemical(food??) companies.
Irradiation, Idon't know enough.
What I do know is at the mini med school I went to last fall Washington University Infectious Disease chair talked of the international foods being sprayed with shtuff that is banned from USA and shipped back in for our consumption!!!!What is with this????!!!! Who the **** is in charge???And why is this OK?????

Shroomgirl, I'm confused. Are you talking about irradiation (foods being exposed to low level radiation to kill harmful bacteria), or genetically engineered food, or pesticides or what?
Being on the receiving end of food borne illness on more than one occasion, I am in favor of the irradiation of meats, seafood and imported fruits and vegetables.
Remember the cholera outbreak in 1997 from fresh raspberries imported from Ecuador? They had been washed in water that was contaminated with the cholera bacteria. These raspberries made it into foods that were served in school cafeterias and made dozens of very young children extremely sick. Irradiation of these raspberries would have prevented the outbreak without harming the quality or shelf life of the product at all.

[shroomgirl]

Sorry i digressed and was following Crudeau......

[mudbug]

Some time has passed, more information is out now.

I was doing research for a friend, thought I'd post my findings here as well for informational purposes. Discuss.

Personally, I'm a firm believer that closer the food we eat is to it's original form in nature, the better it is for our bodies. Any gardener or farmer knows there is a significant difference in home grown meat and produce. It will be more fresh and the maintain the original integrity of the food in which nature intended us humans to ingest it. The more processed something is, the worse it is for us. Just because we "can" process food, doesn't always mean we "should". I also believe processing food has a significant effect on overall human health over the long term and is a large reason why Americans - who live in the most "prosperous" country in the world have health problems that don't exist so much in other countries. Processing in any form increases the shelf life of the product, but decreases yours.

A very simple example of how processing has a negative effect is with grains. White rice has the bran removed - the removal of the nutrients that make rice significantly healthier. Same with wheat. Whole grains (whole wheat is not whole grain) are significantly more nutritious and better for our bodies in multiple ways including actually inhibiting the digestion of fat so that it moves thru the body instead of sticking to our arteries.

Irradiated fruits and vegetables benefit the packer and grocer, not the farmer or consumer. The consumer receives an inferior product that appears fresh, but has depleted vitamins and enzymes.

The Dangers and Unknowns of Food Irradiation
http://www.sustainable-city.org/articles/irradiat.htm
"The FDA reviewed 441 toxicity studies to determine the safety of irradiated foods. Dr. Marcia van Gemert, the team leader in charge of new food additives at the FDA and the chairperson of the committee in charge of investigating the studies, testified that all 441 studies were flawed."

Top 10 Reasons For Opposing Food Irradiation
http://www.mercola.com/article/irrad...on_dangers.htm

Consumer Reports: The truth about irradiated meat
http://www.consumerreports.org/main/...=1059077495746
"At approved doses, however, irradiation doesn't wipe out all bacteria in meat. Much higher doses would be needed to do that, but higher doses are not used because they would significantly degrade the taste of the food. And irradiation is ineffective against prions, the infectious proteins thought to cause mad-cow disease, because prions contain no DNA."
"Our trained taste testers noted a slight but distinct off-taste and smell in most of the irradiated beef and chicken we cooked and sampled, likening it to singed hair. In the beef, the taste was detectable even with a bun, ketchup, and lettuce. Because it was usually subtle, however, some consumers may not notice it."

Is Your Food at Risk?
http://www.leftturn.org/Articles/Vie...?id=570&type=M
"Because food irradiation kills the bacteria that is harbored in the feces, urine, pus and other contaminants on meat, it enables companies to mask dirty meat while providing an additional processing step in which another industry can squeeze dollars from consumers."

DQ FIELD TESTS IRRADIATED BURGERS AS FARM BILL RELAXES LABELING LAW
Date: May 20, 2002 Source: Nation's Restaurant News
Section: News
Keywords Found: 15 Words: 1488 Characters: 9605

Summary: In unprecedented promotional test marketing of irradiated ground beef, Dairy Queen was tallying high marks from burger consumers in the Midwest this month even as President Bush was signing legislation that will permit marketers to label irradiated foods as "pasteurized." House Bill 2646, "The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 20..."

Australia's National Food Irradiation Awareness Tour
http://www.savelakecowal.org/LAKECOW...Irrad_tour.htm
"irradiation masks the filthy conditions in slaughterhouses and food processing plants that cause meat to be contaminated with foodborne pathogens. Irradiation does nothing to remove the feces, urine, pus and vomit that often contaminate beef, pork, chicken and other meat. In Australia, the government’s inappropriately named “Meat Safety Enhancement Program” allows company employees to perform inspection duties once conducted by government inspectors. Standards have dropped to the point that sanitation practices are superior at facilities slaughtering horses and donkeys for pet food, compared to meatworks producing food for Australian consumers. Among many documented problems, up to three-fourths of carcasses have been smeared with feces, old “black” meat has been integrated into meat pies, and fat, rotting meat, blood and grease have accumulated on infrequently cleaned equipment. Slaughterhouse line-speeds have increased by 50-100 percent, making comprehensive inspection virtually impossible."

Food tour highlights dangers of irradiation
http://www.newfarm.org/international...adiation.shtml
"The negative health effects that irradiated foods have had on lab animals are well documented,” Wenonah Hauter, Director of the Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program is quoted in Organic Food Quality News as saying. According to Ms. Hauter these include premature death, mutations, fetal death and other reproductive problems, immune system disorders, internal bleeding, organ damage, tumors, stunted growth and nutritional deficiencies.
Multi-national corporations make billions of dollars in
profits from having an extended shelf life of food...Food Irradiation
significantly alters the composition of food causing chemicals not naturally produced in food to occur. These chemicals include 2-alkylcyclobutanones, or 2-ACBs, benzene and methyl ethyl
ketone that has been linked with birth defects, "cancer development in rats and genetic damage in human cells"."

Food Irradiation Threatens Public Health, National Security
http://www.riles.org/musings37.htm
"Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's last minute provisions in the Senate farm bill allowing irradiated beef to be labelled "pasteurized," instead of the Food and Drug Administration's small print "treated by irradiation" label, is a surprising denial of consumers' fundamental right-to-know.
Irradiated food has been shown to induce genetic damage in a wide range of studies, including tests on malnourished children by India's National Institute of Nutrition."

Articles:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/irradlink.html

Peace Prize nominee highlights dangers of irradiated food
http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/NewsArt...fm?NewsID=1977
"A Nobel Peace Prize nominee warned an audience Sunday of the dangers of irradiated food.
Irradiation is designed to kill food bacteria and fungus, which Caldicott said has become a problem because of ''sloppy, inefficient factory farms.''

The Dangers of Irradiation Facilities
http://www.mercola.com/article/irrad...facilities.htm

Food irradiation violates at least three basic principles
http://www.newfarm.org/international...adiation.shtml
"There’s little, in short, to recommend food irradiation, and many reasons to oppose it.
"But a new set of reasons for opposing irradiation is also emerging. These reasons relate to the impact of irradiation on food systems—intensifying pressures against family-scale farming and community-based processing in industrialized countries, and intensifying pressures against self-reliant, domestically-oriented agriculture in the developing world, for example. For these reasons, food irradiation is no longer just an issue of food safety or nuclear safety. It is now an issue of food security."

What's behind your food
http://www.choosefoodchoosefarming.o...rradiation.htm
consumer health risks
"In addition to environmental hazards, the consuming of irradiated food is not at all proven to be safe. First of all, foodirradiation damages the quality of food. The irradiation of food can destroy essential nutrients and vitamins in food, for example vitamin E and C. The decrease of nutrients and vitamins is increased by the longer storage time of irradiated foods and by cooking. With the decrease of vitamins, the free radicals caused by irradiation bounce around in the food, not only damaging vitamins and enzymes, but they also can combine with existing chemicals (like pesticides) to form new chemicals. Some of these Unique Radiolytic products (URP’s) are unique to irradiated food and never studied before. The long term effect of these chemicals in our diet is never studied and thus unknown. This is potentially damaging to the long and short-term health of consumers, since they don’t eat as many nutrients and vitamins as they think they do. Because irradiated foods are processed in large quantities (see below) this means they will be cheaper and thus affect especially those consumers, who are already struggling to obtain adequate nutrition, such as poorer populations. Secondly, foodirradiation kills 95% of bacteria, but this means that with the bad bacteria, the good ones (e.g. which telltale odours that announce that the food has spoiled) are killed too. Irradiated raw foods that are purchased to be eaten raw are the most treacherous, because they have the nutrition of cooked food and the appearance of fresh food. Irradiating products such as meat can mislead consumers into thinking that these are safe. Irradiation however, does not sterilise food, and any bacteria that remain can multiply to toxic proportions if the food is not properly stored and handled. It is not known what the long-term effects are of frequently eating irradiated food. There have not been any long-term studies conducted on adults or children. Animal studies have shown many health effects, such as tumours, kidney failure, death of offspring and miscarriages. In addition, extended shelf life of food is not in the best interest of the consumer, but always in the interest of the producer. Sprouting and ripening are natural processes that allow the consumer to judge the age and freshness of products. Through irradiation, consumers might be misled."

irradiation covers up problems that should be solved
"Irradiation doesn’t lead farmers to use less pesticides or produce food in a more sustainable way. Foodirradiation can cover up poor hygiene practices and thus provides no incentive to clean up food processing. It can even encourage food producers to lower food safety standards because any degree of contamination could be ‘compensated’ by irradiation. Foodirradiation can thus stimulate a situation where safety and hygiene are neglected but ‘solved’ at the end of pipe by irradiation. The Focus should be on improving production at primary level, storage and manufacturing, rather than on killing off contamination at the last stage. Especially the meat and poultry industry will be less pressured to put a stop to increased contamination and harmful bacteria caused by close confinement of animals, excreta everywhere and extremely fast rates of slaughter."

Use of irradiation questioned in Brazil
http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/n...of-irradiation
"Food irradiation is a sly manoeuvre on the part of agribusiness in order to accrue profits at the expense of people's livelihoods and health..."
"Currently Brazil has the most liberal food irradiation legislation in the world - any food can be irradiated at any dose, and for any reason. In view of this legislation and with the support of Brazil's leaders, irradiation companies SureBeam and Tech Ion Industrial Brazil are now planning to build 21 more facilities. As more US-based agribusinesses move into Brazil, irradiation will enable them to export more produce, because irradiation extends shelf life and kills invasive species that are seen as a "barrier to trade.""

Irradiation’s food for thought
http://www.rochester-citynews.com/gb...oid=oid%3A1368
"Citing studies from the University of Massachusetts and the German government, Public Citizen says that lab animals fed irradiated food have suffered cancer, vitamin deficiencies, and premature death. Irradiation, says a fact sheet from the group, can destroy vitamins, fatty acids, beta carotene, and change the food's flavor and texture. "Irradiation disrupts the chemical composition of everything in its path," the fact sheet concludes. (Proponents argue that traditional cooking does things like this, too --- but when, say, irradiated meat is prepared over a grill, it's being cooked a second time, multiplying the chances for chemical change.)"

What you can do:
http://www.pure-food.com/alerts.htm

[redace1960]

just a quick, scary note-i used to collect antique kitchenware....i owned at point an evaporated milk can opener given out as a premium in the 1950's that had printed on it '*** brand IRRADIATED milk-best for babies'