Is Irradiation Due for a Comeback?

Is irradiation part of the answer to the industry’s reoccurring food problems? When many people think of irradiation, they visualize something along the line of Otto the bus driver popping Homer Simpson’s nuclear material in his mouth. Or you find the contingent that complains it’s just a way to make allowances for sloppiness and allow us eat more filth without repercussions. But irradiation may be in for another, longer, harder look after the huge bacterial food-poisoning episodes of the last several years.

In fact, The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) just released a new policy paper, “Food Irradiation: A Guide for Consumers, Policymakers and the Media.” In the announcement, Robert Brackett, chief science officer for GMA said: “Irradiation can be a safe and effective tool in helping to control foodborne pathogens and can be incorporated as part of a comprehensive program to enhance food safety. There is overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the safety of food irradiation. The FDA, the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Medical Association all agree that more than 50 years of research demonstrate that, at approved doses, food irradiation presents no health risk.”

The New York Times earlier this month had an overview of the state of public, industry and academic conventional wisdom regarding irradiation. In it, Christine Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research at the University of California, Davis was quoted as saying: “Our society is running around with our head in the sand because we have ways to prevent illness and death that aren’t being used,” said. “The rules are so tight on irradiation that you can’t pull it out and use it when a new problem arises, and that’s to the detriment of the American public.”

So while many experts questioned the practicality of using it wholesale for peanut butter due to radiolytic-induced rancidity of the high-fat product, in light of the human and financial cost of this latest contamination disaster, it might well be worth a closer look.

There are two absolute requirements though. First, consumer education, and if necessary more testing to assure the public. Secondly, sanitation can’t take second place. If people want to eat—or drink—poop, let them do it in  $100 cups of elite Café Raro coffee. (That’s a treat otherwise known as “cat poop” or “weasel poop” coffee, which is actually “processed” by a civet, but hey...I’m a food scientist, not a biologist—or a psychologist.) But let me repeat that: Sanitation can NOT take second place. Mistakes can happen and the bad bugs are waiting for an opening. Irradiation won’t be the ultimate answer, but it could prove a valuable tool when used wisely.

–Lynn A. Kuntz