Bacterial food poisoning can be readily prevented by long overdue basic sanitary measures

Caving in to powerful corporate industry interests, both House and Senate Appropriations Committees have recently proposed to sanitize the FDA�s weak labeling requirements for irradiated food by eliminating the word "irradiated" in favor of "electronic pasteurization"; this term was proposed by the San Diego-based Titan corporation, an erstwhile major defense contractor using highly costly linear accelerator "E-beam" technology, originally designed for President Reagan�s "Star Wars" program, to shoot food with a stream of electrons traveling at the speed of light. However, the proposed "electronic pasteurization" label is a euphemistic absurdity, especially since the FDA�s approved meat irradiation dosage of 450,000 rads is approximately 150 million times greater than that of a chest X-ray, besides circumventing consumers� fundamental right to know.

Furthermore, the new labeling initiative is reckless. Irradiated meat is a very different product from cooked meat. Whether the meat is irradiated by linear accelerators or by pelletized radioactive isotopes, the resulting ionizing radiation produces highly reactive free radicals and peroxides from unsaturated fats. U.S. Army analyses in 1977 revealed major differences between the volatile chemicals formed during irradiation and during the cooking of meat. Levels of the carcinogen benzene in irradiated beef were found to be some tenfold higher than in cooked beef. Additionally, high concentrations of six poorly characterized "unique radiolytic chemical products," admittedly "implicated as carcinogens or carcinogenic under certain conditions," were also identified.

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