RATHER THAN APPROPRIATELY SCALING animal operations or slowing down disassembly lines, the meat industry is reaching for “technofixes” to ensure the public of food safety. Unfortunately, it’s just not that simple. Zapping meat with high-powered radiation—150 million times stronger than human X-rays—has been linked to genetic and cellular damage caused by by-products in irradiated food. Then there’s the chemical solution: just sterilize tainted meat with carcinogens.
If nothing else, you have to give the irradiation industry credit for persistence. After decades of controversy, and numerous attempts to convince consumers to get over their gut-level reluctance to eat something that has been zapped with the equivalent of 150 million chest X-rays, the proponents of irradiation still won’t give up. Each year, hundreds of thousands of pounds of ground beef are irradiated prior to being shipped to market. But if the meat industry got its way, this would just be a drop in the bucket; the industry is pressuring the government to allow ever-wider uses of irradiation: from deli meats and hot dogs to baby food and seafood. In 2002, this push for expansion of irradiation included Congress giving the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) free reign to purchase irradiated meat for the government’s nutrition programs—including the National School Lunch Program.1 Fortunately, public outcry has halted schools from accepting or purchasing nuclear meat. Nevertheless, despite public opposition, the meat industry is relentless in its lobbying for massive promotion and expansion of irradiation. And the rationale behind the all-out embrace of irradiation is evident.
Industry and regulators see the use of nuclear materials as a silver bullet technology that can save the factory farming system from itself. The horrific conditions in U.S. industrial feedlots and slaughterhouses not only result in unspeakable cruelty to billions of animals, but they also lead to the creation and spread of pernicious pathogens that have caused illness and death.2
Under increasing pressure to address the public health threats, CAFO operators and agribusiness corporations are turning their sights on irradiation to kill the dangerous bacteria and other pathogens spawned and spread by the factory farming system. Rather than institute sanitary rules for CAFOs and meatpacking plants that would remove the sources of these pathogens, they propose to use irradiation. Rather than slowing down line speeds in plants—which cause contamination of meat, and of course a plethora of workplace accidents and animal cruelty—they again propose the use of irradiation. Because cleaning up CAFOs and reducing line speeds cost money, the industry and its allies in government see irradiation as the technology that lets them continue to run massive factory farms and the massive slaughterhouses they supply.
Instead of requiring CAFOs and meat plants to abide by strong sanitation and safety standards, backed up by adequate government meat inspection and adequate microbial testing, the USDA has promoted the implementation of technological interventions, such as irradiation and chemical rinses, to “clean up” the pathogenic mess.
Some of these technologies, like chemical rinses, are so harsh they actually change the color and consistency of fecal matter so that it’s no longer considered “feces.” Since this altered fecal matter doesn’t meet the official definition of “feces,” the carcass is not condemned. The result is that meat with visible feces on the carcass can be kept on the production line, treated with a chemical rinse, and later sold to the consumer. 3
Irradiation, this purported panacea for food safety, is itself a source of toxic meat. Food irradiation uses high-energy gamma rays, electron beams, or X-rays (all millions of times more powerful than standard medical X-rays) to break apart the bacteria and insects that can hide in meat, grains, and other foods.4 Radiation is one of the more destructive forces in nature, and simple logic dictates that doses powerful enough to kill living organisms are also powerful enough to fundamentally alter the food itself. Voluminous scientific research has borne this out, finding that while a radioactive assault may kill bacteria or insects, it also destroys a food’s vitamins and can significantly alter its chemical composition. As ionizing radiation passes through cells, it can throw electrons out of orbit, breaking chemical bonds and leaving highly reactive free radicals in their wake. These free radicals re-form into radiolytic products (chemicals created in food by the irradiation process), which include both known carcinogens like benzene and formaldehyde, as well as new chemical compounds.5
Since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of irradiation on major portions of our food supply, we might naturally assume that the overwhelming majority of these studies revealed no mutagenic effects. Not so. At least 12 published journal articles report mutagenic effects from in vivo studies on animals or cells grown on, or exposed to, irradiated substances. Other published studies have explored possible links to colon tumor promotion, impacts on hemoglobin, and other health effects.6
Many of these published studies state in frighteningly clear terms the potential hazards posed by these foods:
•“Freshly irradiated . . . diet fed to male mice of both strains caused an increase in early deaths of offspring of females mated to the males in week 7 and to a lesser extent in week 4.”7
•“Cytogenetic [related to cell DNA] examinations of the developing spermatogonia in 30 mice of each group revealed that cytogenetic abnormalities were significantly more frequent in the group fed irradiated flour than in the control group.”8
•“Feeding of mice (males and females) for two months before mating with 50% of the standard complete diet (solid cakes) irradiated with 5 Mrads of radiation provokes a significant increase of pre-implantation embryonal deaths.”9
•“The children receiving freshly-irradiated wheat developed polyploid cells and certain abnormal cells in increasing numbers as the duration of feeding increased and showed a gradual reversal to basal level of nil after withdrawal of the irradiated wheat. In marked contrast, none of the children fed unirradiated diet developed any abnormal cells.”10
Scientific evidence raising doubts about the safety of irradiated foods continues to accumulate. The most recent studies have focused on a particular group of by-products of the irradiation of meat that fall into a class of chemicals known as cyclobutanones, which are generated when fatty acids in foods are irradiated. This research is particularly important because these by-products are inevitably formed during the irradiation of meat foods and because the results suggest that these chemicals may pose serious health hazards.
Thirty years ago, a research team from the University of Massachusetts discovered that the irradiation of certain fats found in common foods such as eggs, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, and turkey produces unique chemical by-products classified as cyclobutanones.11 These by-products are ubiquitous in irradiated meat products, nonexistent in unirradiated products, and can persist in food samples for a decade or longer.12 In fact, researchers can so easily detect these cyclobutanones in irradiated foods that they can conclusively test for irradiation based on the presence of the chemicals.
In 1998, scientists at Germany’s prestigious irradiation research facility, the Federal Research Centre for Nutrition and Food, found that 2-dodecylcyclobutanone (2-DCB), a common cyclobutanone and a by-product of irradiated palmitic acid, caused genetic and cellular damage in human and rat cells and also produced genetic damage in live rats fed the chemical. Palmitic acid is the most concentrated or second most concentrated type of fat in beef, pork, lamb, chicken, and turkey. It is also common to numerous processed foods, including ready-to-eat sauces, pizzas, and snacks.13 Perhaps even more frightening than these findings is that so little other research has been done on the human health implications of cyclobutanones. Scientists have identified a number of these substances (aside from 2-DCB) created during the irradiation of other types of common fats. While these cyclobutanones are present in irradiated foods, they have never been tested for their potential to cause cellular or genetic damage in people who consume them.14
Tests performed over the past decade demonstrate that the amount of irradiation required to produce cyclobutanones falls well below levels used by the food irradiation industry.15 FDA officials are fully aware of these studies. They also know that cyclobutanones persist in irradiated foods for years and that cooking does little or nothing to diminish their concentrations. Undoubtedly, these dangerous chemicals exist within portions of our food supply. Why are we eating foods that some studies have shown to damage our cells and our genes? It challenges the imagination to believe that the FDA would approve this technology, while barely mentioning, or even ignoring, studies that show it is unsafe. Yet this is exactly what has happened.
On December 8, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower stood before the United Nations and unveiled his plan for a new era marked by constructive, not destructive, uses for atomic energy. Shortly after, his Atoms for Peace program generated a long list of ideas for harnessing atomic energy, including nuclear airplanes, wristwatches, and long johns—even coffeepots that could boil water for a hundred years without a refueling. While most of these ideas thankfully ended up in the dustbin of history, the idea of using radioactive materials to “treat” food survived.
Irradiation has had different homes in the federal government over the decades. During the 1960s, the army did the early research that resulted in FDA approval of irradiation for bacon. But after more research revealed that animals fed irradiated bacon suffered serious health problems, the approval was withdrawn.16 Two decades later, the army had abandoned its irradiation research program.
In the 1970s, interest in food irradiation was smoldering in other parts of the federal bureaucracy, not because of its potential to deal with food safety or shelf life, but because establishing a domestic use for nuclear waste material such as cesium-137 could solve a persistent problem for the nuclear industry. The Department of Energy (DOE) launched the ByProducts Utilization Program to dispose of the highly radioactive waste from nuclear bomb production by using it for food irradiation and by selling some of the waste to private companies. But the DOE’s scheme came to an end in 1988, when a serious accident occurred at a facility near Atlanta where cesium-137 was being used. Radioactive material leaked into a water storage pool, and contaminated water splashed onto food and medical packages being irradiated. Some of the workers carried radioactivity into their homes and cars. The mess cost more than $40 million to clean up, and taxpayers footed the bill.17
The cast of characters promoting food irradiation in the early days included Martin Welt, president of Radiation Technology, Inc., which built irradiation plants in New Jersey and several other states. During the 1970s and 1980s, Radiation Technology was cited more than thirty times for various violations at its facility in Rockaway, New Jersey, including throwing out radioactive garbage with the regular trash and bypassing safety devices that protected workers. Welt, a much-quoted advocate of irradiation, was eventually convicted on six federal charges, including conspiracy to defraud the government and lying to federal investigators.18
After this rocky start to the commercial food irradiation industry, things didn’t really improve. Since the 1960s, dozens of mishaps have been reported at food irradiation facilities throughout the United States and the world. Radioactive water has been flushed into the public sewer system. Radioactive waste has been thrown into the garbage. Facilities have caught fire. Equipment has malfunctioned. Workers have lost fingers, hands, legs, and in several cases their lives. And the new generation of irradiation facilities, which use speed-of-light electron beams from machines called linear accelerators instead of radioactive cobalt-60 or cesium-137, are not without risk just because they don’t use nuclear material. These “e-beam” facilities emit ground-level ozone, a toxic pollutant that contributes to smog. And at least two workers have been seriously injured in e-beam plants.19
As the irradiation industry and their friends in government continue to push for the use of irradiation on a mass scale, the impact of facilities where irradiation takes place must not be forgotten. The infrastructure required to irradiate a large part of the food supply would require hundreds of these facilities, which would put far too many communities and workers at risk.
Fortunately, irradiated foods are not yet a significant portion of Americans’ diets. Irradiated products still have to be labeled as such, and food manufacturers and processors have been reluctant to market irradiated products because those introduced to date have not sold well. In fact, irradiated products currently for sale claim only a tiny percentage of beef patties, sold mostly in the Southeast and Northeast; some papayas from Hawaii; some mangoes from India; and a few other foods. But despite the limited markets for these products, a new onslaught of regulatory and public relations initiatives seeks to revive the desperate industry. The FDA approved the use of irradiation for spinach and lettuce in 2008, although no companies have yet found a way to bring irradiated greens to the market. And the agency is sitting on petitions to allow the use of irradiation on other “ready to eat” foods such as lunch meats and hot dogs. The USDA is considering a petition from the meat industry that would allow meat packers to irradiate whole carcasses inside the slaughterhouse before they are processed into cuts of meat.
And it’s not just approval for more uses of irradiation that the industry wants. Hiding behind their standard claims about the benefits of irradiation, the meat, food processing, and grocery industries continue to try to change Americans’ minds about irradiated food. With such a large majority of the public against the technology, the industry is reduced to simply trying to make sure consumers won’t know what food has been irradiated by weakening labeling requirements. At present, food must be labeled “Treated by Irradiation” and display a “radura” symbol—usually a small green flower within a circle. After years of pressure from the industry and instructions from Congress, the FDA is also trying to change the rules to allow a less alarming, more familiar term, like pasteurization, to be used to label irradiated food.
Not content to stick to covering up contamination in meat, the federal government and agribusiness are pushing irradiation in response to recent bacterial outbreaks in fresh vegetables, including E. coli-contaminated California spinach that killed 3 people and sickened more than 200 others in twenty-six states in fall 2006. As it stands now, however, irradiation cannot legally be used to kill bacteria on most vegetables. And the FDA may not have the justification to approve it. Very little testing has been conducted on the safety and wholesomeness of irradiated vegetables—and no published research exists on whether irradiated lettuce and spinach are safe for human consumption.20 Rather than irradiating fresh vegetables, more care should be taken to prevent the flow of manure from industrialized livestock operations onto cropland, which many believe to be the cause of the California spinach outbreak.
Food irradiation and other technological quick fixes only serve to sustain the inhumane and unacceptable practices of the meat industry. Preventing a future that includes a largely irradiated diet will take a grassroots response that lets food corporations and regulators know that consumers want clean, wholesome food, not irradiation.