Kitchen Gardeners International: US Considers Nuclear Option

By JIM DOWNING, Published December 19, 2006 in The Sacramento Bee

Two high-profile E. coli outbreaks this year have some in the food business wondering - once again - whether it's time to go nuclear. For decades, many food safety experts have argued that irradiation - zapping food with high-energy rays to kill microorganisms - could avert hundreds of deaths and perhaps millions of illnesses each year. But for just as long, federal regulators and food retailers have been leery of bringing the technology to market.

Despite exhaustive reviews by federal scientists and endorsements by public health and medical groups around the world, irradiation by its very name conjures up images that are anything but wholesome - nuclear fallout, for one.

That imagery, combined with some lingering uncertainties about irradiation's effects on food, has helped grass-roots activists make a potent case against it.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved irradiation as a disinfectant for a limited range of foods, including spices and ground beef.

But a food industry petition to greatly expand that approval to include many ready-to-eat products - fresh bagged greens, for instance - has been awaiting review by the agency for more than seven years.

Now, with both government officials and the produce industry feeling pressure to respond to the recent outbreaks, irradiation is again up for debate.

Jeff Barach, vice president of the Food Products Association, the trade group that brought the 1999 irradiation petition, said he had for months been unable to get an audience with FDA officials - until September's outbreak of E. coli in spinach from Salinas Valley, Calif.

"We all of a sudden got a meeting" with the head of the department that is evaluating the petition, Barach said.

He said he offered to limit the scope of the request to fewer products in exchange for a quicker decision from the agency.

An FDA spokesman said the agency can't comment on the petition's status.

Members of California's fresh greens industry recently have been discussing irradiation - among other strategies - in their ongoing negotiations on food safety standards, according to Trevor Suslow, a specialist in perishable produce at the University of California, Davis, who has been present at some of the sessions.

One appeal of irradiation to the produce industry has to do with the difficulty of pinpointing the source of contamination following a foodborne illness outbreak. By the time someone gets sick, there is a good chance the offending bacteria have died off.

So, farmers and food processors - and federal investigators - can't tell where safeguards failed.

Irradiation introduces the prospect of a final "kill step," for fresh produce, an additional layer of protection if other precautions fail.

The high-energy rays can penetrate packaging, making it possible to do a final disinfection after, say, spinach leaves have been washed and sealed in a bag. The technology can also kill pathogens nestled where disinfectants like chlorine don't always reach - in a crevice in a leaf of spinach, for instance.

Recent studies have shown that the technology will reduce populations of common foodborne disease pathogens by at least 99.9 percent without hurting the quality of most fresh produce, according to Brendan Niemira, a lead scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety Intervention Technologies lab in Pennsylvania.

Irradiation disinfects food by damaging the DNA of microorganisms, rendering them unable to reproduce. The most common irradiation machines employ the high-energy gamma rays produced by radioactive cobalt.

In Polk County, Mulberry-based Food Technology Service Inc. operates a gamma irradiation facility that will treat some 14 million pounds of meat, produce and poultry this year, up from about 12 million pounds in 2005, according to Jim Jones, the company's vice president of sales and marketing.

Although Food Tech's stock has briefly jumped during E. coli outbreaks, roughly 60 percent of the firm's business comes from irradiating medical supplies, not food, Jones said.

Newer irradiation alternatives use X-ray and electron acceleration techniques that do not require radioactive material like Cobalt 60. Units suitable for mass food processing cost between $4 million and $8 million, according to two U.S. food irradiation firms.

Irradiation was first identified as a food disinfectant in the 1920s. It does not make food radioactive, and its safety is supported by the results of nearly all studies of the technology performed over the past 50 years.

Still, were the irradiation of ready-to-eat produce to be approved, it would likely be the target of fierce campaigning by some public-advocacy groups.

"I would characterize our view on irradiation as calling for a moratorium,"
said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety in Washington.

In 1999, when the USDA was considering whether to allow irradiation and genetic engineering in certified organic foods, Kimbrell's group helped build strong opposition that included 300,000 public comments. The agency decided to keep both technologies out of the production of organic foods.

Kimbrell said that research results don't provide proof of the safety of irradiation. He also argues that its widespread use would lead the food industry to be sloppy in other areas.

Michael Pollan, an influential writer on food and agriculture, raises another objection: If a costly food safety technology like irradiation becomes a standard step in food processing, small producers are likely be hurt more than large ones, who are in a better position to absorb major expenses.

That's particularly galling, Pollan said, because the national-scale outbreaks of foodborne illness that tend to prompt the use of such technologies are usually linked to big operations.

The average grocery shopper doesn't have much of an opinion one way or the other about irradiation, said Christine Bruhn, a cooperative extension specialist at UC Davis.

About 15 percent know about the technology and support it, while 10 percent are opposed, she said.

While the recent E. coli episodes have again prompted discussion of wider use of irradiation, a major change isn't likely unless the produce industry's troubles continue, she said.

Text source: The Sacremento Bee
Photo source: PDXdj

Posted by KGI on December 20, 2006 5:01 PM to Kitchen Gardeners International
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