Posted: Friday, October 3, 2003
ARTICLES
Publication Date: October 3, 2003
The National school lunch program was introduced to ensure that school children have access to safe and high-quality foods. The Farm Bill passed by Congress last year allows any safe and effective technology to be used for processing food for the school lunch program. The USDA followed up by approving the use of irradiation to enhance the microbiological safety of foods for school lunches starting in January 2004.
"Misinformation on the safety and effectiveness of food irradiation is being disseminated through the media...Some politicians are getting involved to exaggerate the misinformation further." These are statements issued jointly by Paisan Loaharanu, former Head, Food and Environmental Protection Section, Joint FAO/IAEA Division (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations/International Atomic Energy Agency), Vienna, Austria, and Morton Satin, former Chief, Agro-Industries in FAO, Rome, Italy. The two world-renowned experts were personally involved in all facets of food irradiation including testing for wholesomeness of irradiated foods and evaluations of the safety of irradiated foods by international expert committees appointed by FAO, IAEA, and WHO in the past two decades. Together, they are co-founders of an International Council on Food Irradiation (ICFI) to provide science based information and education materials on food irradiation for the benefits of governments, industry, academia, and consumers.
According to Paisan Loaharanu, "the safety of irradiated foods is well established through many toxicological studies including mutagenic, genotoxic, and short- and long-term multi-generation feeding tests involving multi-species animals and human volunteers, carried out in the past five decades. There is no scientific evidence to demonstrate adverse effect for consumption of any irradiated foods. In short, there is no other food technology that has undergone more safety tests than food irradiation. Based on an overwhelming body of scientific evidence to support the safety of irradiated foods (some 500 references alone were reviewed at the last expert committee convened by FAO, IAEA, and WHO in 1997), the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the competent international standards-setting body in the field of food safety, decided in June this year to amend the Codex General Standard for Irradiated Foods to allow food to be irradiated with any dose under good manufacturing practices." He noted however that there were some isolated studies in the past using invalid scientific protocols that resulted in some apparent negative effects of a few irradiated foods. However, data from these studies could not be substantiated when studies were later repeated and better designed. Therefore, sound science supports the safety and effectiveness of irradiation as a food process. He emphasized that "irradiation technology will have a far-reaching impact — and consequences for food safety, security, and trade. Many food products, especially those of animal origin, will benefit greatly from irradiation in terms of microbiological safety, in the same manner as thermal pasteurization has brought tremendous public health benefits to liquid foods, e.g., milk." He went on to say, "Do not believe everything you read in the media, especially those which refer to information provided by self-promoted advocacy groups against new technologies such as irradiation. Irradiation technology is now approved for processing some or all foods in over fifty countries including the USA."
Morton Satin went one step further, suggesting that "perhaps irradiation should be mandatory for some high risk foods such as ground beef, chicken, seafood, etc." At the International Meeting on Radiation Processing (Chicago, September 7th to 11th this year), he challenged the food industry and scientific community to conduct a comparative toxicological study on high-heat treated foods vs. irradiated foods subject to mild cooking, as the latter product would not only be highly nutritious and microbiologically safe but has much better palatability. He joined Prof. J. Rosen of Rutgers University in stating that "I like my meat rare but my science well done."
The two experts agreed that school children are particularly vulnerable to foodborne diseases, as noted in a General Accounting Office report this past May showing that 195 foodborne disease outbreaks occurred between 1990 and 1999 in which children (thousands of them) were sickened, even though the incidents constituted only about 3% of all foodborne disease outbreaks for that period. GAO suggests that "purchasing precooked or irradiated meat and poultry products could reduce the risk of foodborne illness in schools."
No doubt the purchase cost of using either precooked or irradiated foods in the school lunch program will increase. (Irradiation is likely to have an edge over precooking of products such as ground beef, chicken, and seafood since the treated products will remain raw and can be prepared to meet culinary requirements.) However, the benefits accrued from using irradiated (or precooked) foods will result in school children with good health, greatly reducing the cost of medical fees and school days missed for sick children. It will also prevent the onset of some follow-up diseases and medical costs resulting from foodborne illnesses, including hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), Guillain-Barre syndrome, Reiter syndrome, meningitis, and reactive arthritis. School administrations are urged to evaluate irradiation as a means of protecting children from food contaminated by dangerous microorganisms such as E. coli 0157:H7, Salmonella, Campylobacter jejuni, Listeria monocytogenes, etc. They should know that those who try to prevent irradiated foods being served in the school lunch program are, in effect, denying the right of school children to safe foods.
Paisan Loaharanu recently revised and updated ACSH's booklet on Irradiated Foods.
