d o c u m e n t
SHELF DEATH:
Nuked Meat Makes it to Grocery Shelves
Guys,
Well! What's next?
Good reading!
Khalid.
SHELF DEATH:
Nuked Meat Makes it to Grocery Shelves
First there were nuclear bombs. Then, nuclear power. Would
you believe that nuclear food treatment is next?
By MARK WORTH
Don't blame Tom Harkin for being fooled. He was just trying to tell a good story.
On a fall day back in 1985, Harkin, newly elected Democratic senator
from Iowa, told his former colleagues on a House
subcommittee about how, while serving as a Navy jet pilot during
the 1960s, he lived on pork that had been treated with radiation,
ostensibly to make it safer to eat by killing harmful bacteria.
"I can remember eating some processed meat -- I think it was bacon
or ham -- that had been irradiated and kept on the shelf in a
vacuum-sealed package. I think it was preserved for seven years,"
Harkin told the panel, which was debating a food irradiation bill at
the time. "We ate it, and I had never heard of such a thing. I thought
to myself at the time, 'Why aren't we pursuing things like this?'"
Harkin's fascination surely would have been doused had someone leaned
over and told him that in 1968, the year after he left the
Navy, it was revealed that rats fed irradiated food by military
scientists died younger, gained less weight, and apparently grew more
tumors than rats fed normal food.
Fooled once.
Later that fall day, the House subcommittee heard an American Medical
Association official proclaim that using radiation to rid food of
bacteria "is not a public safety hazard, and I can't emphasize that
strongly enough."
Too bad no one was there to remind the fellow that just a year earlier,
he wondered in a memo to his AMA colleagues whether
irradiated food might harm the offspring of animals (not to mention
humans) who eat it, create mutant radiation-resistant bacteria, or
sicken people who eat the stuff for long periods of time.
Fooled twice.
Since that hearing in 1985, Americans have been fooled time and time
again -- by government bureaucrats, and food and nuclear
industry executives trying to sell irradiation as a way to kill
E. coli, Salmonella and other food-borne pathogens, while extending the
shelf life (and, thus, the global market reach) of meat, fruit,
vegetables, spices and prepared foods such as TV dinners and baby food.
Like salespeople, though, they're not telling the whole truth. Information
that could help citizen/consumers make better decisions --
information about how irradiation depletes nutrients in food, causes
health problems in laboratory animals, spawns mutant life forms,
kills beneficial microorganisms, turns some food rancid, marginalizes
already struggling family farmers, encourages the proliferation
of nuclear technology, and masks filthy slaughterhouse conditions
that foul meat with feces, urine, and pus -- has been craftily
excised from the public debate.
While an all-out scientific and philosophical war is being waged
over genetically engineered food, federal officials and corporate
interests such as Kraft, Tyson and Wal-Mart are quietly attempting
to legalize and commercialize an under-tested, over-hyped
technology -- which claims to make food safer by zapping it with
the equivalent of tens of millions of x-rays -- that could pose just as
many dangers to the public. If not more.
Listening to the Past
Though it was fully 100 years ago that an MIT professor discovered
that radiation could be harnessed to kill bacteria in food, it wasn't
until the 1950s -- under President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace
initiative (which also promised that nuclear power would be "too
cheap to meter") -- that food irradiation began to nudge toward
the mainstream. But once the procedure started to gain popularity, it
didn't take long for problems to crop up.
That pork that a young Tom Harkin ate when he was in the Navy? Turned
out it might not have been safe after all. Military-sponsored
tests yielded all sorts of nasty problems in lab animals fed irradiated
food. A short time later, three executives of the firm hired by the
military to research irradiation during the 1970s were convicted
of doing fraudulent work. No matter. The federal Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) continued to allow potatoes and wheat flour
to be irradiated and fed to the public.
Then came the innocuous-sounding Byproducts Utilization Program,
under which the federal Department of Energy (DOE) started
hunting around for places to pawn off deadly waste from its nuclear
installations -- such as the radioactive cesium-137 wallowing at
the nuclear bomb factory at Hanford, Washington (arguably the most
polluted place in the Western Hemisphere).
With the government's blessing -- if not its encouragement -- the
private sector started to get into the act. Given the spotty record of
companies using radiation to sterilize medical supplies, however,
one wonders how the government could have allowed them to start
irradiating food. From 1974 to 1989, there were 45 recorded accidents
at US irradiation plants. Among the worst:
* In 1977 a worker at the Radiation Technology plant in Rockaway,
New Jersey, received a near-fatal dose of radiation, after which
company president Martin Welt ordered staffers to give false information
to federal investigators. After some 32 violations for such
offenses as throwing out radioactive garbage with the regular trash,
Welt was forced to resign (though the government soon after
hired him as a $100-an-hour consultant and he eventually started
another irradiation company.)
* In 1982 cobalt-tainted water was flushed down the public sewer
system at the International Nutronics plant in Dover, New Jersey,
leading to the federal conviction of a company executive who tried
to cover up the incident.
* From 1985-99 the Neutron Products plant in Dickerson, Maryland
was cited for 192 safety and other violations. The place was so
hot with radiation that a company vice president's contaminated
clothes set off an alarm at a New York nuclear plant he was visiting in
1988.
* In 1988 a Hanford-harvested capsule of cesium-137 sprung a leak
at the Radiation Sterilizes plant in Decatur, Georgia. The ensuing
cleanup cost taxpayers more than $45 million.
Government officials and industry execs still hold out hope that
cesium-137 will find a niche in the food irradiation market, despite the
Decatur disaster -- and despite the deaths of four people in Goiania,
Brazil, whose bodies were buried in lead-lined caskets after they
mistakenly handled radioactive cesium in 1987.
Ruining Your Appetite
If irradiation plants sound scary, listen to what happens to food when it's blasted with gamma rays, electrons or x-rays.
For starters, dozens if not hundreds of formal studies conducted
over the past 40 years -- all rejected by the FDA as being poorly
done -- have revealed serious health problems in lab animals fed
irradiated food. You name it -- shorter lifespans, low birth weight,
kidney damage, immune and reproductive problems, chromosomal abnormalities,
tumors. If it could go wrong, chances are it did.
In one of the few recorded studies conducted on people, Indian researchers
discovered in the mid-1970s that malnourished children
fed freshly irradiated wheat developed polyploidy, a defect in the
chromosomes of blood cells. (FDA officials triggered an international
incident by rudely discounting the study, going so far as to publish
false information in the Federal Register.)
What's worse, irradiation -- with all of its deadly unknowns -- creates
an entire new class of mysterious compounds by literally
smashing apart the chemical bonds in food and sending electrons
flying all over the place. Even though these "unique radiolytic
products" -- as well as well-known toxins such as formaldehyde,
benzene, and formic acid that irradiation can produce -- have
mutagenic and carcinogenic potential, government officials have
not come close to adequately studying how they could harm people.
And, irradiation can stimulate the creation of carcinogenic aflatoxins
in grains and toxic solanine in potatoes, the latter of which sent
17 English boys to the hospital in 1979.
What's worse still, vitamins and nutrients take a beating under the
onslaught of irradiation, destroying up to 95 percent of vitamin A in
chicken, 86 percent of vitamin B in oats, and 70 percent of vitamin
C in fruit juices. Essential amino acids and polyunsaturated fatty
acids can be depleted as well.
A host of other unintended consequences can result, including onions
that turn brown on the inside and meat that smells like a wet
dog, the elimination of such beneficial microorganisms as the yeasts
and molds that help keep botulism at bay, and the possible
mutation of bacteria into forms resistant to radiation.
Reinventing Government
Without exception, FDA officials -- for one reason or another --
have chosen to ignore the piles of research suggesting that irradiating
food may be problematic. But that's not the half of it. The government
has built its entire case in support of irradiation on a mere five
studies -- none of which were done after 1980 -- that officials
not-so-enthusiastically said two decades ago "do not appear" to indicate
the process is potentially harmful.
Moreover, since the FDA began stepping up its approval of the food
and nuclear industries' irradiation requests in 1983 -- beginning
with a request by the infamous Martin Welt to irradiate parsley,
sage, rosemary, thyme and other seasonings -- no significant research
has been done on whether the process is safe for the additional
food groups and at the higher doses. For instance, FDA officials, who
said in 1982 that irradiating food with 1 kiloGray of radiation
was probably safe, have little or no idea whether it's safe to irradiate
beef
and lamb with 7 kiloGrays, which the agency approved in 1997.
The government, as is often the case, should know better. The feds
ignored the concerns of one of their own experts, former
high-ranking FDA scientist Marcia van Gemert, who cautioned back
in 1982 that no long-term studies had been done on irradiated
food likely to become a significant part of people's diet.
Van Gemert's warning is as timely as ever. At this writing, the FDA
is considering a proposal from the powerful National Food
Processors Association to irradiate ready-to-eat food such as TV
dinners and luncheon meat. The agency has also provisionally
allowed pre-packaged food to be blasted with electrons (or "e-beam"),
even though US Food Safety and Inspection Service chief
Thomas Billy wrote that "we have no data specifically supporting
the assumption" that the procedure is safe.
Donald Louria, chair of preventive medicine and community health
at the New Jersey University of Medicine, has been raising red
flags about the dangers of food irradiation for more than 10 years.
And he's still as worried as he's ever been: "Until the industry is
willing to agree to nutritional studies on each type of irradiated
food and to put the results on the label, and until there is a proper study
of the potential chromosomal damage of irradiation, we should not
be irradiating our foods."
In Our Hands
Slowing -- much less stopping -- the government-blessed, corporate-bankrolled
food irradiation movement is a tall order, to say the
least.
This spring, Wal-Mart -- the largest retailer on Earth with $160
billion in annual sales -- began test-marketing irradiated meat to its
customers. Wal-Mart is buying the products from meat-packing giant
IBP, which zapped them at an e-beam facility in Sioux City,
Iowa, operated by Titan Corp., an erstwhile defense contractor notorious
for its polluted iron plant in Keasbey, New Jersey. Titan is
also irradiating meat for Tyson, Cargill-owned Excel, and Philip
Morris-owned Kraft, among other major players in the
ever-consolidating, ever-globalizing meat industry.
Corporate giants are also showing up on the research end of things.
For instance, work at the Illinois Institute of Technology, one of
the nation's leading irradiation research installations, is funded
by Coca-Cola, ConAgra, Kraft, Nestle, and Pepsico. And, many "food
safety" advocacy groups throwing their weight behind irradiation
are actually industry front organizations. The corporate-funded
American Council on Science and Health, for example, is chaired
by A. Alan Moghissi, whose anti-environment and anti-consumer
positions include fighting the removal of asbestos from schools
and proclaiming that higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
is a good thing for the agriculture industry.
Funny, the food industry hasn't always been unified in its support
of food irradiation. Just seven years ago, the editors of Meat &
Poultry magazine took the technology to task, warning that it should
not be embraced as a panacea to protect people from
contaminated food. "To think we can literally cram irradiation down
the throats of consumers because it is the 'right' answer to our
problems," the editors wrote, "is to step on the opinion of the
very people we depend on for survival."
With industry and the government evangelizing in unison for food
irradiation, it is, in fact, only the consumers can stop this
under-tested, over-hyped technology from being crammed down their
throats.
Mark Worth is senior researcher at Public Citizen's Critical Mass
Energy and Environment Program. Those interested in voicing their
concerns about food irradiation can contact:
Wal-Mart: 1-800-966-6546 (ext. 3) or 1-800-WAL-MART
Donna Shalala, Secretary, US Department of Health and Human Services: 202-619-0257 or 1-877-696-6775
Thomas Billy, administrator, US Food Safety and Inspection Service: 202-720-7025
For more information on food irradiation, call Public Citizen's Critical
Mass Energy and Environment Program at 202-546-4996, or
visit www.nonukedfood.org.
Arkansans protest Wal-Mart plans
to sell meat treated with radiation
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Civic leaders, concerned citizens and Wal-Mart customers on May 2
urged Wal-Mart not to test-market irradiated meat in its
Supercenters.
Food irradiation is a process where food is exposed to high levels
of radiation in order to kill bacteria and extend shelf life for up to
35
days. While proponents of the process state that irradiation will
make food safer, no one really knows the health impacts of eating
irradiated food.
"We oppose food irradiation because it merely masks the problem of
poor meat processing practices that leave meat contaminated
with feces, urine and pus," said Marquette MyCue, a local community
leader in health related issues, in a news conference at the
Fayetteville Hilton. "At a minimum, Wal-Mart should warn consumers
of the dangers of irradiated meat with labels that state irradiation
does not kill all bacteria, that it destroys important vitamins
and enzymes, and that it leads to the formation of potentially carcinogenic
chemicals in food."
"Irradiation translates into big profits for Wal-Mart, but something
entirely different for consumers," said Wenonah Hauter, director of
Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project. "Corporate agribusiness
has convinced the government to abandon its protective role,
allowing companies like Wal-Mart to use food irradiation to extend
the shelf life of meat beyond what is appropriate and mask the
unhygienic conditions in which animals are raised, slaughtered and
processed."
Most American consumers share the views expressed at the news conference.
A 1999 poll commissioned by the American
Association of Retired Persons and Center for Science in the Public
Interest found that 88.6 percent of Americans want labels to
indicated food has been irradiated. A 1997 CBS News poll found that
77 percent of Americans would not buy irradiated food.
Another problem with irradiated meat is the threat to small farmers
in the United States as well as around the globe. Family farmers
and small food producers are finding it impossible to compete economically
with corporate factory farms. The extended shelf life
resulting from irradiation will enable foreign meat producers to
drive the small American farmer out of business.
The body of research on irradiated food is sketchy at best and has
yielded conflicting results. There are no studies on the long-term
health effects of irradiated food on humans. Among the unknowns:
whether irradiation has different effects on frozen food as
compared to fresh food; how irradiation affects irregularly shaped
foods; its effects on helpful bacteria; and the effects of irradiation
on plant workers who oversee the treatment of food.
According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) documents, a
1982 FDA review of 413 studies found 344 to be inconclusive
or inadequate to demonstrate either the safety or toxicity of irradiated
foods, while 32 indicated adverse effects and 37 showed the
procedure to be safe.
In February, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) legalized
the irradiation of raw meat and meat products such as
ground beef, steaks and pork chops. The government declared food
irradiation safe by using mathematical calculations supported by
just five animal studies conducted primarily in the 1960s and 1970s
that were of questionable quality.
Under the USDA's labeling requirements, meat served in such places
as restaurants and cafeterias will not have to be labeled, so
consumers will have no idea when they are eating irradiated meat.
However, irradiated meat sold in stores must be labeled as such.
Home Page
News | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links