The Question of Irradiated Beef in Lunchrooms

[Susan L Gawarecki <loc@icx.net>]

The Question of Irradiated Beef in Lunchrooms

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/29/dining/29WELL.html

January 29, 2003

By MARIAN BURROS



   RRADIATED beef may be coming soon to your local school cafeteria. 



The farm bill that was passed last May directs the Agriculture

Department to buy irradiated beef for the federal school lunch program.

It will be up to local school districts to decide if they want it.



Americans have been reluctant to buy food that is irradiated, a process

that uses electrons or gamma rays to kill harmful bacteria like

salmonella and E. coli 0157:H7, which cause food poisoning. Some people

fear, wrongly, that the food is radioactive. Others are concerned that

the process hasn't been tested well. They may be correct.



Based on European studies showing the formation of cancer-causing

properties in irradiated fat, the European Union, which allows

irradiation only for certain spices and dried herbs, has voted not to

permit any further food irradiation until more studies have been done.



Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute at the

Consumer Federation of America, said: "There is nowhere in the world

where a large

population has eaten large amounts of irradiated food over a long period

of time. It makes me queasy that we are going to feed it to

schoolchildren." 



Advocates of meat irradiation have been struggling for public

acceptance; some irradiated meat is being sold. But some within the food

industry criticize the tactics being used to gain acceptance for food

irradiation. Diane Toops, the news and trend editor of Food Processing,

a trade magazine, said in this column in 2001: "The irradiation business

is making all of the same mistakes biotechnology has made, trying to

force their new technology down the throats of consumers who have a lot

of questions."



Because the word irradiation conjures up radioactivity and, more

recently, the method by which anthrax spores have been killed, the

industry has tried to keep it off food packaging. It is lobbying to use

a word with which people are more comfortable: pasteurized.



A farm bill provision, added by Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat,

directs the Food and Drug Administration to look for a less

fear-inducing word. Senator Harkin, a longtime proponent of food safety,

is also responsible for the language in the bill that directs the

Agriculture Department to buy irradiated meat. 



The same month the farm bill passed, according to the Federal Election

Commission in 2002, Senator Harkin received a $5,000 campaign

contribution from the Titan Corporation, which until last August owned

the SureBeam Corporation of Sioux City, Iowa, the country's largest food

irradiator. Tricia Enright, Mr. Harkin's spokeswoman, said: "Tom

Harkin's record as a leader of food safety is unparalleled. His

commitment to this technology goes back decades." 



The Harkin provision has given the Bush administration what it asked for

in 2001: irradiated beef in the school lunch program, in place of

testing for bacterial contamination. School lunches fall under the

jurisdiction of Dr. Peter S. Murano, deputy administrator of the Food

and Nutrition Service. He and his wife, Dr. Elsa Murano, the Agriculture

Department's under secretary for food safety, are known for their

writings on the use of irradiation to improve food safety. Previously,

she ran the food irradiation program at Iowa State University. 



To convince the public that irradiation is necessary because food

poisoning has been increasing in schools, the meat industry cites a

General Accounting Office study issued on April 30, 2002, that maintains

that such outbreaks are rising at the rate of 10 percent a year. 



But Dr. Robert Tauxe, chief of the foodborne and diarrheal diseases

branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said, "The

percent of outbreaks in schools hasn't changed in the last 10 years."

The statistical change, he said, is due to better reporting. 



Although the Agriculture Department is authorized to offer irradiated

meat to schools, the secretary of agriculture, Ann M. Veneman, is moving

slowly. So far, it is served only in schools in a pilot program in

Minneapolis. According to the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit

Washington advocacy group, which opposes irradiation of food, of more

than 1,500 comments the Agriculture Department received from the public

on the subject, two-thirds were against it.



"I don't think the right place to start this is in the school lunch

program," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the

Center for Science in the Public Interest. "There is not enough public

acceptance. It's essential parents be allowed to sign off before

irradiated meat is allowed. If kids don't have the right to refuse and

it's not labeled, it's really taking consumer choice away." 



The American School Food Service Association, a trade group, states that

irradiation will make beef safer and save money, because salmonella

testing will no longer be necessary. That idea angers people like Ms.

DeWaal, who said, "Irradiation is not a substitute for testing." 



Barry Sackin, a lobbyist for the food service association, said that

school districts will have the right to refuse irradiated meat, and when

it is  used, it will have to be labeled. "The last thing we need is a

reporter who puts out a story that kids are served irradiated meat and

parents didn't know," he said.

-- 

.....................................................

Susan L. Gawarecki, Ph.D., Executive Director

Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee

102 Robertsville Road, Suite B, Oak Ridge, TN 37830

Toll free 888-770-3073 ~ www.local-oversight.org

.....................................................

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