The berries won’t glow in the dark–irradiation does not make food radioactive-but they have already lit a storm of protest. Food & Water, Inc., an advocacy group formed in 1986 to fight food irradiation, has already run take-no-prisoners ads warning that the process produces foods that “might kill you,” and it promises to have droves of protesters at the Miami grocery this week. Vindicator president Sam Whitney relishes the fight. He boasts that he has customers from Rhode Island to Minneapolis clamoring for irradiated berries-with chicken and meat, vegetables and other produce ready to follow the trailblazing fruit into the atomic age. The appeal? Irradiation kills salmonella, which taints half the chickens sold in the United States. It kills bugs and fungus on fruits and vegetables, and extends shelf life so that produce won’t spoil en route from the South to the snow belt. Anyone opposing such a miracle process must be experiencing “a knee-jerk reaction that happens when you combine the word ‘food ‘with the word ‘radiation’,” says food-safety professor Mark Tamplin of the University of Florida.
In fact, the opposition includes not just anti-nuke kooks, but credentialed scientists. When gamma rays, emitted by radioactive cobalt-60, zap food, they destroy some nutrients, especially vitamins A, C, E and certain B’s, notes Dr. Donald Louria of the New Jersey Medical School. But the big concern focuses on what the food gains. “Gamma rays can break every chemical bond [in a food’s proteins, fats and carbohydrates] with gusto,” says biophysicist Richard Piccioni, who works for Food & Water. The liberated molecules are free to recombine with new mates hike the newly divorced at a mixer. “So the number of chemical outcomes is more or less astronomical,” says Piccioni. “No one pretends to understand what happens.” Most of the newly formed compounds have not been identified, let alone tested for toxicity, and so may or may not be dangerous. But other molecules found in zapped food are not exactly healthy. They include carcinogenic formaldehyde (in irradiated starch) and benzene (meat), mutagenic peroxides (plant tissue) and formic acid (sucrose).
Proponents retort: sure, but the quantities are so small as to be insignificant. George Pauli of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration estimates that all such “radiolytic products” total no more than 30 parts per million in irradiated food. Individual compounds are present at levels of parts per billion. There is more benzene in some nonirradiated dairy products and produce than in zapped meat. Piccioni agrees that the amounts of known compounds might be too small to worry about. .‘my concern," he says, “is that we do not know the fun list of what’s produced. If you don’t know that, how can you say the cancer risk is less than the level of concern?”
But the FDA does say that The agency approved irradiation for fruits and vegetables in 1986, pork in 1985, white potatoes in 1964, wheat and wheat flour in 1963. In 1980 the agency concluded that, based on theoretical analysis, the amounts of radiolytic products likely to be produced by zapping food with fewer than 100,000 rads (about 10 million chest X-rays’ worth) was so small that the food need not be subject to standard toxicity testing. “To do animal feeding tests would be a waste of time,” says Pauli. The agency did review 441 existing studies. It eliminated all but five for poor quality. Two of the five used radiation doses lower than the FDA approved. A third found that animals fed the zapped food lost weight and died, probably due to the destruction of vitamin E in the food.
If people don’t want to trust the FDA, can’t they stay away from irradiated food? Not necesessarily. Irradiated whole foods must be labeled. But there is no such requirement for prepared or packaged foods that contain irradiated ingredients, or for food sold in restaurants or schools.
Allowing irradiation facilities to multiply like marigolds could also pose a threat to workers and the public. Radioactivity can leak. Although the gamma-emitting cobalt is shielded by water, as at the Vindicator plant, an accident can expose workers to the cancer-causing and possibly lethal rays. In 1988, at a Decatur, Ga., plant that irradiated medical supplies, some steel rods corroded, exposing employees to radiation and turning 25,000 gallons of water “hot.” Transporting cobalt-60 to replace used-up gamma sources presents more opportunities for accidents. Today, 37 facilities use gamma sources to sterilize medical equipment, tampons and sanitary napkins; if food irradiation takes hold, the number of such plants, and the amount of cobalt-60 zipping along the nation’s highways, will shoot up.
In the end, the risks remain unknown, and perhaps unknowable. Who, then, benefits from atomic food? Poultry producers might, since their chickens would no longer be smothered in salmonella. Yet calls in nuclear technology, rather than more government inspection and tighter standards, is like nuking a jaywalker-especially since proper cooking kills salmonella anyway. Grocers might appreciate zapped food; it would reduce losses from spoilage. Entrepreneurs such as Whitney, of course, stand to profit nicely. But maybe not quite yet. Maine, New York and New Jersey prohibit the sale of irradiated food; H.J. Heinz, Quaker Oats, Ralston Purina, McDonald’s, Campbell’s and the top 13 poultry producers have all vowed not to sell irradiated food or use irradiated ingredients, largely because they fear the wrath of gammaphobic consumers. This week’s strawberries will be a small test of whether people are ready to eat at the atomic cafe.
Photo: Relishing a good fight against anti-nukers and radiation-phobes: Vindicators’s Sam Whitney (RIC FERRO-FOTOBANC)
How an Irradiation Facility Works
Trays of food are loaded into vertical pallet carriers.
The carriers pass through a room where racks of cobalt-60 have been raised from a pool of water. Gamma rays emitted by the cobalt kill pathogens such as salmonella, as well as bugs and fungus on produce, and inhibit maturation to extend shelf life.
