February 4, 2004

by denis mosgofian

It's about irradiation

THE U. S. Department of Agriculture has just approved the distribution of irradiated meat to public school children. This practice will support the government's effort to privatize management of nuclear waste and cover up unsanitary corporate food processing.

Food irradiation is not about food anymore than nuclear power was about electricity. Both were part of the Atoms for Peace program developed in 1953 and '54 under President Eisenhower to convince the public that there were peaceful uses of the atom. The real purpose was to shore up public support for the nation's nuclear weapons program in the face of the huge worldwide movement to ban the bomb. We were told that through nuclear power electricity would be too cheap to meter and through irradiation of food refrigeration would be a thing of the past.

San Francisco school board member Mark Sanchez has introduced a resolution similar to that adopted by the Los Angeles and Berkeley school boards to prohibit serving irradiated food in school food programs. It deserves all parents' immediate attention and support.

There are three things to look at with food irradiation. First, gamma radiation's impact on food; second, how food is irradiated; and third, why food might need irradiation – and what irradiation will cover up.

Ionizing radiation affects plants and animals by producing ionic reactions, and these reactions can have a wide range of destructive results. The radiation can damage molecules, disrupt DNA, produce chemical poisons, and permanently disrupt the life cycle of the organism.

Molecules in food are not exempt from the effects of the radiation. Nutrients can be affected, and vitamins, such as A, B2, B6, C, E, and K, along with key amino, nucleic, and fatty acids, are vulnerable to destruction. Feeding irradiated food to public school children will mean that many children will receive food even more depleted of nutrients than they get now. Many studies have proved this. The residues of fumigants, pesticides, and insecticides will also be irradiated, and nobody knows all the poisons that process could produce.

In a clinical study in Hyderabad, India, children receiving freshly irradiated wheat developed abnormal cells in increasing number as the duration of feeding increased, and they showed a gradual reversal to normal after they stopped eating irradiated food.

There is no widespread food-irradiation industry today. The infrastructure has not yet been built. But the Department of Energy hopes it can promote the industry so it can privatize the management of much of the 11 billion curies of radioactive Cesium 137 that will have built up in the United States by 2020. Every community in which the DOE has tried to help build a food-irradiation facility has fought it tooth and nail. But every time a school board approves the use of irradiated food (in a population that has no ability to reject it), the DOE's plan gets a push forward.

Proponents say irradiating food kills bacteria and organisms. But in fact the bacteria and organisms found in our food are successfully washed away and killed with proper handling and cooking. The real issue is that our food supply is often contaminated because it is a product of corporate food production and processing. What irradiation will do is institutionalize the worst corporate food-processing practices and make even easier the efforts of industry to kill off Food and Drug Administration and USDA inspections, microbial testing, and regulations. Irradiation will cover up, not clean up, our food. And irradiation will not kill mad cow prions.

In the long term, the disease and death resulting from irradiation facilities housing radioactive isotopes in and near our communities will increase and will not change corporate food-processing practices, which need cleaning up, not covering up. Call the school board members and say you support Sanchez's proposal.