Irradiation is approved for other purposes on a whole variety of foods—everything from strawberries and other fresh fruits to meats and spices. On bananas or something like that coming into the country, it would be used to knock out pests, or to control sprouting and ripening. With meat, it's approved as pasteurization to kill illness-causing organisms such as E. Coli or salmonella.
Across the world, there are many countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium, France, South Africa, Japan and Thailand that allow irradiation. You can argue that for some countries, having the ability to prevent spoilage is an important contributor to enhancing food security. Spoilage takes a lot of product off the shelves or makes it nutritionally unacceptable.
Does irradiation affect taste or nutritional quality?
There's no difference in taste. I have had irradiated spinach and it doesn't taste any different.
Some nutrients are impacted. Among vitamins B, C, B6, B2, E and precursors for vitamins A and K, the loss that we see is comparable with the loss from other food processes that we might use (like thermal processing for canning or pasteurization), if not less.
Some irradiated products, mainly meat, do develop an aroma—it's not a bad thing. If you vacuum package a raw pork cut and then irradiate it, it develops a unique aroma that dissipates as soon as you open the package.
How much does irradiating food cut down on germs that make us sick?
What we're trying to affect is a 99.9999 percent, or 100,000-fold reduction in germs.
We irradiate for the pathogen that is most risky and most likely to be there. We would not necessarily be irradiating meat to, say, kill Clostridium botulinum spores, because there's a fairly low risk of them growing and creating the toxin that causes botulism, which may result in paralysis and death. But we would adjust the dosage to kill E. coli O157, which is more likely to be there and to grow if the product is not stored at the right temperature. We can actually count how long and at what dosage it takes to kill a particular number of microorganisms per minute. It might take a lot higher dosage to knock out C. botulinum than O157. (E. coli O157 can cause severe stomach cramps, bloody diarrhea and vomiting.)
Does irradiation work against viruses?
It doesn't work as well against viruses. We're not sure why. But in processed food, viruses don't typically cause problems. Where we do see them is in food-service food. There are an estimated 76 million cases of food-borne illness each year, and about half are caused by Norovirus, or Norwalk-like virus. (Norovirus causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and some stomach cramping.) They come from someone failing to wash their hands; fecal material there then can be transferred into food.
Could radiation be used to kill salmonella in peanut butter?
Products high in fat may not be very amenable to radiation. When fats break down they produce off-flavors.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) now requires almonds to be pasteurized, because of salmonella outbreaks in 2001 and 2004. That same type of regulation will probably happen to peanuts also, and that would be a thermal process—roasting in dry heat or immersion in oil at a level that would kill disease-causing organisms.
To what extent do we use irradiation in the U.S. now?
A significant number of spices that enter this country are irradiated, but otherwise, it's not so common. The problem becomes one of public perception. People are not aware of the benefits compared with the minimal risk associated with it. Some groups adamantly oppose irradiation. It does cause changes, but these groups believe it causes negative health changes to humans and that hasn't been shown.
What kinds of changes does irradiation cause?
Anytime you break bonds in chemicals you're going to introduce changes in the molecules. The important part is that the changes don't impart any toxicological effects to the food, and irradiation does not appear to do that. You can see unique by-products formed, but there's been no evidence that these cause human illness at the levels that they are in the food. There was some thought that 2-alkylcyclobutanone, a by-product derived from fatty acid, could cause cell mutations that might lead to cancer. The most recent science evidence suggests otherwise: It was extensively tested and does not cause mutations.
Does radiation stay in the food?
No. The food is not radioactive by any means. In fact the food is probably safe, if not safer, than before it was irradiated. It's an entirely safe process with wide application that could reduce hunger in some countries through reduction of spoilage, and can certainly reduce food-borne illness in this country.
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15 Comments
Add CommentI, for one, do NOT want my food irradiated. If we eat locally produced food that is raised with cleanliness this problem would not arise. We really don't know how irradiation will affect our health way down the line.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWanting to irradiate our foods for longer shelf life and because they don't want to clean up their act smacks of corporate greed once again.
I see farmworkers harvesting in fields with nothing more than a moveable portapotty nearby. Handwashing facilities should be supplied and handwashing enforced by growers or people hired to supervise harvesting by hand. Washing in packing faciities can't aways remove fecal bacteria.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisuser659callifornia, I agree! Here in Oregon, I picked strawberries as a kid and I noticed that most of the workers didn't have the best sanitary standards! If people knew that the guy that picked their fruit or vegetables had gone to the bathroom and not washed his hands, would they be fine knowing they just rinsed their fruit in a bit of cold water?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIrraditation would prevent many deaths and countless cases of sickness, but people have such an irrational fear of anything "radioactive" that they'd rather play Russian Roulette with their food than have it irradiated!
PLEASE IRRADIATE MY food! I have zero issue with this and I've been an advocate of this since I first heard about this in the 80's. People have died because of germs in the food supply. This would have already saved lives. If this were a clinical trial it would be unethical to not irradiate food at this point!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI know radiation sounds like to boogie man but in this application it's not.
Workers in the field are not the only issue. The last outbreak of salmonella was attributed to a water supply.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI 100% agree that the best solution is a clean environment. However realistically speaking that aint gona happen! So irradiation is a good answer to mass produced food,
Urania: You are living in an elitist fantasy world. Locally-grown food is impossible for the mass population. You didn't mention that you want to pay a LOT more for your food, which is what will happen if quality is increased (unless you hold a paranoid belief that 'other' people intentionally produce contaminated food because they don't care [like you, of course, do] or are just plain mean spirited). I've personally met this person Corp. Greed. Do you know where he lives?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIrradiate all of it...especially milk and ganges beef! Remember that irradiation never makes anything radioactive...unless the food is wound thru a neutron flux. Uhmm tasty!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am also for food irradation. However I feel there should be lable showing the food was processed in this way. This has made Genticaly modified foods a problem because people do not understand the process involoved.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor food irradation you use a radio active source to destroy all harmful parasite bactreria fungie etc. Nothing can survie the radation. The food is safe to eat and there is no lingering radioactivity. The food is much much safer to eat and is easer to handle. I used to work in the food processing environment and microbacterial buildup is always a issue in food processing equiptment. Souds like the people got sloppy in washing the equiptment and the inspections failed to catch it .
I am surprized there is no radom sampling done as part of a quality control. If random samples were pulled sooner or latter the bad batch would have shown up.
While irradiation can reduce contamination by viable microbes, I am concerned that processors will rely on it and abandon the few contamination-mitigating practices that they currently use.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think irradiation is great. It is especially valuable for organicly grown foods, where disease carrying manures are used for fertilizer, where Pateurization is avoided, and where preservatives are left out. All three of these situation increase the danger of food poisonings. I support buying locally grown foods, but they aren't saintly when it comes to diseases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSCI-AM, I would appreciate better editing on your part when it comes to scientific names. Genera, such as Salmonella, should always be capitalized. Species, such as the coli of E. coli, should always be in lower case. Thank-you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm older, now 60, and am having trouble with my balance in the dark house at night. Please irradiate my food!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am very comfortable with the idea of being my own night-light!
This is the result of overdoing the processing of foods. Yore, no such sickness, how come it exist now? The answer is just simple...we tend to overdo everything and failed to see the possible negative output. But its not yet too late.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to know what the studies are that show 2-Alkylcyclobutanones (2-ACBs) are safe. The research I read found it to be a mutagen, carcinogenic and to promote tumor growth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this# Raul, F. et al. "Food-Borne Radiolytic Compounds (2-alkylcyclobutanones) May Promote Experimental Colon Carcinogenesis". Nutrition and Cancer, 44(2): 188-191, 2002.
# Delincee, H. and Pool-Zobel, B. "Genotoxic Properties of 2-dodecylcyclobutanone, a Compound Formed on Irradiation of Food Containing Fat". Radiation Physics and Chemistry, 52:39-42, 1998.
I wonder if it may be the causative factor in the rise in colon and prostate cancers.
Irradiation is expensive and adds cost to food. It changes the fats and nutritional content. Sure cooking does to, but we are not talking about replacing cooking with irradiation. This means the end product is even more nutritionally deficient.
Irradiation plants expose workers and the environment to harmful radiation. All we are doing is exchanging one poison for another.
If irradiation of food stuffs became common, could we use radioactive waste for a source of radiation? If so, could it reduce the problem waste products?
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