Re: Food Irradiation

["DAVE GILMORE" <DGILMORE@navajo.astate.edu>]

Eric Denison replied:
I'm all in favor of continued investigation of and expanded use of food
irradiation, but I wonder if there's a simpler solution.  Couldn't folks
just COOK the blasted burgers?  During my time in a clinical lab, I don't
recall meeting up with any e. coli varieties that could handle more than a
few seconds at stove-top temperatures.  Are the new strains that much
tougher, or are we seeing a new paranoia in action?  Reminds me a bit of the
"any radiation is too much" crap we keep seeing.

At the risk of straying off topic slightly, three comments:
a. home cooking of burgers sometimes results in food rather overdone 
on the outside in order to get it thoroughly cooked inside, and some folks 
don't like their food that well done; trivial I suppose.
b. What's the infective dose?  A well-contaminated burger not cooked 
to sterilization may still harbor enough live bacteria for an 
infective dose.
c. Error Cost.  Botulism toxin is easily destroyed by boiling.  
Should we then not worry about contaminated canned vegetables?  The 
new strains of coli are not more heat resistant (probably), it's just 
that they're better at causing disease.  If 5 people buy contaminated 
meat and 1 person, for whatever reason, doesn't cook it well enough, 
you have a potentially serious health problem.

When we cover disinfection and prevention of disease spread this 
semester, I'll be sure to discuss food irradiation.  College students 
are the ones just about to establish food buying habits... a good age 
to educate.

David F. Gilmore
Assistant Professor of Environmental Biology    0  0 
P.O. Box 599, Dept. of Biological Sciences       __    "have a day" 
Arkansas State University 
State University, AR 72467
dgilmore@navajo.astate.edu
ph  501-972-3082    fax 501-972-2638