Irradiated Foods: Before You Put The Meat On the Barbecue Grill Read This!

Four years ago, according to Dr. Urvashi Rangan an environmental health scientist and policy analyst at Consumers Union which is the publisher of Consumer Reports Magazine, examinations by the well known consumer watchdog group were conducted of irradiated meat and over 800 samples of ground meat were tested. It was concluded that, while irradiation lowers the levels of bacteria on meat products, radiation didn't always kill all of the bacteria. This means the products were likely safer; they are not necessarily safe.

Dr. Urvashi Rangan puts it another way, "....from our recent survey in June 2007, 71 percent of consumers don't particularly want to buy irradiated products."

We need to understand why food requires radiation in the first place. Dr. Rangan says it is to control filth.

We know with meat production, it is a very dirty process from the beginning. A googdly amount of farms simply don't have established hygiene standards to follow, nor do they follow the rules they have in place for sanitation. That is where the bacteria start. Cleaning up must start at the beginning. When that is done an assessment can be made to determine what additional measures are really necessary to provide safe edible meat.

As is stands now, even without the proposed regulations, meat that is unfit for sale, meat so contaminated it would be illegal to sell it, can actually be stored, irradiated and then sold to the public after that. The proposals is that if there's no change in taste that then the company could go forth and sell it without an irradiation label. This depends on many factors suchas how much radiation is used, and who is doing the tasting.

There is the potential to mask very serious hygiene problems. Irradiation can mask the fact the food was very dirty in the first place, spoiled even.These products can be sold to and unknowingly bought by consumers. The public could end up buying food previously so contaminated it would have been illegal to be sold.


The fact is right now at the processing plant if meat is so dirty that it doesn't pass USDA inspection standards, the meat can be held by the processor, irradiate it, and then sell it to consumers.

It would be impossible to standardize which foods are labeld radiated and which do not receive a label. We believe all foods that are irradiated should be labeled as such.

The public comment period on these proposed FDA irradiation rules ended on July 3, 2007. Make your opinion known to the regulating agency; contact your federal legislators to let them know how you feel about the proposed changes to protecting our food supply.

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