Less-Than-Glowing Image Hampers Food Irradiation

Today, 90,000 people in the United States will become ill from eating familiar foods that have been poisoned by germs--rare hamburgers, raw eggs, lettuce, chicken, berries, sprouts. They will suffer stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhea, and a few will face kidney failure. About 25 of those individuals will die.

Discouragingly in this day and age, such food-borne illnesses are on the rise, scientists reported at a first-ever international meeting on the problem last week in Atlanta. The reasons are varied, they said--including changing diets and a rise in imported fresh produce.

Yet while alarmed scientists acknowledge that risk-free dining is unattainable, many say a simple technology exists that is the next best thing: irradiation, a treatment that has been around for decades. But for some of the same reasons Americans were slow to embrace pasteurization of milk 100 years ago, the technology largely remains on the shelf.

Despite a rash of recent incidents and a growing public outcry for safer food, run-ins with critics on the food front--ranging from proponents of organic foods to extremist groups that have stirred up hysteria over new food technologies--have made both government and industry reluctant to aggressively lobby for irradiation.

A tiny but vocal band of opponents has threatened to boycott any business that sells irradiated food. And opinion polls reveal that much of the public is ambivalent or negative feelings about irradiation, a term that for many conjures up images of mushroom clouds and Chernobyl.

Now advocates hope that the landscape has been significantly altered by the Dec. 2 decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve, for the first time, the use of irradiation for red meat.

Still Illegal to Sell Irradiated Beef

The nation’s giant meat processors and fast-food chains are quietly investigating the technology as they await U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines on packaging and dosages, expected later this year. Until those are in place, it remains illegal for a company to sell irradiated beef.

Irradiation, a simple process that involves bombarding foods with gamma rays, X-rays or electron beams, is already used successfully--but in limited circumstances--to kill harmful germs and parasites on poultry, spices and fruits. It is enthusiastically backed by everybody from physicians and cattle ranchers to dietitians and restaurateurs.

Public health officials, most of whom embrace irradiation as a potent food-safety tool, decry the “food terrorism” of fringe groups.

“I happen to be somebody who keeps counting the bodies” of people who die of food poisoning, said Michael Osterholm, Minnesota’s state epidemiologist and a noted investigator of food-borne illnesses. “That’s just unacceptable. [Irradiation] is the firewall you need to have in place.”

Until about 100 years ago, milk coaxed from diseased cattle and bottled in unsanitary conditions killed people with distressing regularity.

Then Louis Pasteur discovered that the gentle heating of liquids could eliminate dangerous germs. Yet it took decades to overcome public suspicion and gain widespread acceptance of what came to be called pasteurization.

Scientists claim that irradiation can do for beef what pasteurization did for milk--and in particular wipe out a virulent strain of E. coli that has sickened thousands in recent years and prompted last summer’s unprecedented recall of 25 million pounds of hamburger.

In the most common method of irradiation, gamma rays emitted from slender metal rods containing radioactive cobalt-60 pass through food held in big metal containers. The rays create positive and negative charges that disrupt fast-growing cells of insects, molds and microbes. The rods are housed in a chamber with 6-foot-thick concrete walls; they rest in a deep underground pool of water, where the cobalt, when not active, casts a bluish glow.

Although the debate over food irradiation sounds new to many, the technology is a century old. During World War II, the Army zapped ground beef to keep it fresh longer--and thus found a peaceful purpose for the atom.

Medical Devices, Cosmetics Irradiated

Today, irradiation is widely used to sterilize medical devices and an array of consumer products, such as cosmetics, tampons, baby bottle nipples and the tiny plastic cups that hold cream for coffee.

In foods, irradiation not only slays germs but also extends shelf life. The technique has been used since the dawn of the space program to sterilize food for astronauts.

The FDA has also approved its use to disinfect wheat and wheat flour; to control trichina in pork; to wipe out assorted pests in spices; to delay sprouting or ripening of fruits and vegetables; and to eliminate salmonella and campylobacter, bacteria found in poultry that are the two leading causes of food poisoning in the United States.

The technology also can kill most E. coli O157:H7, the bacterial strain that made headlines in 1993 when tainted Jack in the Box burgers killed four children in the western U.S.

All this sounds good enough to get even Oprah Winfrey back on the burger bandwagon.

But there are issues.

There’s the cost, for one thing. The nation’s 56 or so irradiation facilities--most of which sterilize medical supplies, not food--couldn’t begin to satisfy all the demand should chicken and beef processors decide en masse to irradiate their tons of output.

Plants Would Cost $12 Million Each

Additional plants would be required near meat facilities, each taking a year and about $12 million to build. Some companies are experimenting with small, self-contained and cheaper irradiation units, but those have not gotten off the ground.

And proponents are well aware that just because the FDA approves of irradiation doesn’t mean consumers will. Until shoppers display a robust appetite for foods bathed in gamma rays, processors and fast-food chains won’t make the leap.

As of now, only about 10% of the spices, herbs and vegetable seasonings used in the United States--and a much smaller percentage of the poultry and produce--are irradiated.

“When you go out and talk to these guys, all of them want to be second,” said Jim Clouser, president and chief executive of SteriGenics International, a Fremont, Calif., company with 13 irradiation plants, including three in California.

Another problem is the term itself. It sounds so nuclear.

“If it was called something else, we wouldn’t be arguing,” said John Masefield, chief executive of Isomedix Inc., a medical sterilization company in Whippany, N.J., that in 1994 filed the petition with the FDA that led to the approval of irradiation for red meat. “We’re trying to use ‘cold pasteurization’ or ‘ionizing pasteurization.’ ”

When the California Poultry Industry Federation held focus groups recently throughout the state, all but two of 60 participants indicated that irradiation “scares the daylights out of them,” said Bill Mattos, president of the Modesto trade association. But, he said, they warmed to the term “cold pasteurization.”

Last September, CNN Online News hosted an electronic bulletin board to solicit comments on irradiation. Meat Marketing & Technology, a trade magazine, contacted dozens of electronic mailers who responded negatively, asking why they opposed the technology.

One wary contributor was quoted in the magazine’s January issue: “Only a small portion of the population gets sick or dies from food-related contamination, and much of that stems from their own bad food-handling habits at home. I’m not saying the food industry doesn’t have any problems, but irradiation will not solve those problems.”

(Even irradiated beef could become contaminated if mishandled in a home or restaurant. But scientists emphasize that cleaning up meat and poultry in the slaughterhouse would go a long way toward eliminating the chief sources of contamination.)

Other e-mailers expressed concern about the added cost for food (a few pennies per pound for irradiated ground beef), the potential loss of nutrients and the unknown long-term effects of eating irradiated food. Some consumer groups say they fear that the meat industry would view the technology as a panacea and halt ongoing efforts to improve farming practices, clean up slaughterhouses and packing plants and educate consumers about safe food-handling and cooking.

Epidemiologists Hail Irradiation

Such talk perturbs food scientists and epidemiologists, who say irradiation is the most studied food preservation technique in history.

“Many people aren’t educated as to the benefits,” said Christine M. Bruhn, an irradiation advocate who directs the Center for Consumer Research at UC Davis.

That is changing, however. A Food Marketing Institute survey in 1994 showed that 36% of consumers would be very or somewhat likely to buy irradiated foods. Last year, that figure soared to 60%.

Scientists agree that irradiation does not make food glow in the dark or cause cancer, as some activists like to claim.

As for taste, irradiated foods often win in consumer tests. Microbiologist Donald W. Thayer, who has studied irradiation for the USDA since 1981, said tasters usually view irradiated poultry as fresher and better than its nonirradiated counterpart. And irradiated strawberries are often deemed sweeter.

But irradiation can alter meat color, making pork bright red, for instance. And, in ground beef, the process can result in a rancid odor, although the smell dissipates once the package is opened. It also is not suitable for all foods; it wilts lettuce and can soften raspberries.

The process can also eliminate a portion of some vitamins, but researchers say that the losses are no greater than those from canning and cooking.

In an effort to crank up the dialogue, food industry groups and researchers are holding a raft of symposiums and conferences to raise awareness and grapple with practical issues such as how to package, label and market irradiated foods. Among concerns: Do nonirradiated foods suffer in shoppers’ eyes if they sit next to irradiated foods touted as safe?

Marketers could take a cue from Pat Corrigan, co-owner of Carrot Top, a grocery store in the affluent Chicago suburb of Glenview, Ill.

For nearly a decade, the store has featured irradiated items--Hawaiian papayas, Florida strawberries and Georgia onions. The displays trumpet the fact: “Treated by irradiation.” Stickers with the radura, a stylized green flower that symbolizes irradiation, are also prominent on the products.

Corrigan said the foods are a hit with shoppers. One season, when rain drove up the price of California strawberries, irradiated counterparts from Florida outsold them 4 to 1, Corrigan said.

In most parts of the country, irradiated produce and poultry are as rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth. A restaurant chain in Orlando, Fla., serves irradiated poultry, and some irradiated Hawaiian fruit is occasionally test-marketed in various cities.

Much of that exotic fruit is treated at Food Technology Service, the nation’s only plant built strictly to irradiate food. Since the facility started up six years ago in the little town of Mulberry, Fla., Executive Vice President Harley Everett has been praying for a boom. There is no sign of it yet.

The plant irradiates poultry for hospital patients, astronaut food and some fruits and vegetables. The company is also talking with most major players in the meat business, but no contracts have been signed. Developing a commercial market has been tough.

“We expected to be where we are now several years ago,” Everett acknowledged.

Progress might have been swifter but for the outsize protests of Food & Water, a small Walden, Vt., consumer group that unapologetically seeks to make life miserable for any company that publicly avows an interest in irradiation.

Michael Colby, who heads the group, said his supporters rely on an “activist toolbox” that includes boycotts, rallies, advertising and phone campaigns that snarl corporate lines.

Two years ago, when Hormel Foods Corp. sent two employees to an irradiation symposium in Dallas, Food & Water contacted the company and demanded a promise that it would never irradiate its products. Hormel declined, according to company spokesman Allan Krejci.

In January 1997, the day of the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting, Food & Water placed an ad in Hormel’s hometown newspaper in Austin, Minn. It pictured a can of Spam, a well-known Hormel product, labeled “Irradiated.” Above it, the headline read: “There’s only one thing worse than Spam. . .”

McDonald’s Corp. Examines Technology

In February, a nervous Hormel issued a statement that it had never irradiated any of its products. Today, Krejci (noting that Spam is a preserved product that would not require irradiation in any case) says of irradiation, “We haven’t yet determined whether we would use it.”

McDonald’s Corp., which has also wrestled with Food & Water, is circumspect. “We’ll always be interested in looking at any new technology that might fit into the equation,” said Walt Riker, a spokesman for the Oak Brook, Ill., fast-food giant.

Meanwhile, alternatives are emerging. But, like irradiation, they have their problems.

Cargill Inc.’s Excel Corp. blasts microbes with steam, a pasteurization process that it developed for its meat plants. The technique is effective but treats only the surface of the carcass.

IBP Inc., another meat giant, is installing steam cabinets. And this month, two New York poultry producers plan to test a fledgling technology that exposes food to ozone, a treatment that oxidizes microorganisms much as hydrogen peroxide works on a wound.

Yet Osterholm, the Minnesota epidemiologist, finds it tragic that irradiation has not gained greater acceptance, given its effectiveness.

“Every day we debate this,” he said, “there are more people who develop food-borne illness. Whether you like irradiation or not, you have to look at the facts. To say that irradiation is a problem is to argue that the Earth is flat.”

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How Irradiation Works

Irradiation Room

Chamber has 6-foot-thick walls

Radiation shield

Storage pool

Radioactive cobalt-60 is contained in sealed stainless steel tubes called source pencils.

Conveyor System

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Food irradiation kills bacteria in meat, eliminates pests in spices and extends the shelf life of fruits and vegetables. Food is exposed to intense radiant energy called ionizing radiation. Cobalt-60 is the most common source of ionizing energy.

1. Packaged food is moved along conveyor belt in metal bins called totes.

2. Food totes end up in processing room, where a rack containing cobalt-60 rods is raised from storage pool. Rods are positioned between totes.

3. Gamma rays, emitted from the rods pass through the food, creating positive and negative charges that break down fast-growing cells of insects, molds and microbes.

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Source: USDA Agricultural Research Service; UC-Davis