Re: AW: AW: Food Irradiation Alert - Sierra Club of Canada

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

The latest issue of Consumer Reports reports that 49% of the 484 fresh chickens they purchased had either salmonella (12% of the samples) or campylobacter contamination (42% of the samples.  5% had both.  The samples included supermarket house brands, four national brands, premium ("organic" "free range" etc.) brands, and kosher chicken.  samples were purchased in 25 cities in the U.S.   The percent of chickens contaminated was less than the  75% found in 1997.  There was no correlation between salmonella and campylobacter or between any supplier and the contamination.  For example, the least salmonella of those that had salmonella contamination (almost none) was in a national brand that had the second most campylobacter, and the least campylobacter was in the premium brands and in a national brand that had the second most salmonell!

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Interesting to us (in case you wonder where this is going) is that irradiation to kill these bacteria is not even mentioned in the article.  I am composing a letter to the magazine on this topic.  


The article describes the current inspection schemes and the processing methods.  it would be interesting to note how these compare with the analogous European schemes.


Ruth

Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com