Health Sciences
Institute e-Alert
July 29, 2003
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Dear Reader,
Would you like to participate in an experiment? There's
just one catch: you, your family, and your friends and
neighbors are going to be the guinea pigs. Enjoy!
If that sounds like a joke, you won't be laughing when you
hear the new information about irradiated meat that appears
in the August 2003 issue of Consumer Reports (CR) magazine.
Longtime e-Alert readers know that I have occasionally taken
Consumer Reports research to task whenever I felt it veered
outside its zone of competence in healthcare matters.
But I'll be the first to acknowledge when CR research stays
inside that zone and gets it right - which is the case with
a recent CR microbial analysis and taste test of irradiated
meat sampled from grocery stores in 11 states.
Unfortunately the results don't smell very good.
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Suddenly, I'm not hungry
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Last February I sent you two e-Alerts about the dangers of
irradiated meat: "Don't Beam Me Up" (2/4/03), and
"Radiation Nation" (2/10/03). I promised
to keep you up to date on the latest developments, so when
I saw this CR report I wanted to share the details with you,
along with some other information you won't find in the report.
To briefly recap: Irradiation is a process by which a food
product is exposed to extremely high doses of radiation that
breaks down chemical bonds, killing bacteria, parasites and
fungi that may cause disease. But like any technology
that monkeys around with nature, you usually end up doing
as much damage as good.
Consumer Reports asked specially trained shoppers to purchase
grocery store samples of irradiated beef and chicken in 60
U.S. cities. More than 500 samples were cold-packed and shipped
to labs for examination. To no one's surprise, the bacteria
levels were found to be "significantly" lower in
the irradiated meat samples compared to non-irradiated meat.
And if that were all that mattered, the test would
be a triumph
for irradiation.
Two key points from the CR microbial analysis stand
out:
1) After meat has been irradiated it can
still become contaminated if not handled properly. And
according to the Centers for Disease Control, 20 percent of
food-borne
illnesses are caused by mishandling after meat reaches the
store.
2) After meat is purchased, if it's properly
stored and cooked, irradiation offers no benefit because proper
cooking kills more bacteria than irradiation.
But there's one more point on the safety issue that completely
floored me. Here's how the CR report puts it: "The
government considers irradiation so effective that it allows
tainted ground beef that otherwise would be unlawful to sell,
such as meat containing E. coli O157:H7, to be irradiated
and sold to consumers."
Staggering, isn't it? Knowing that, and given the choice
between irradiated meat and normally processed meat, which
would you choose?
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Tainted never tasted so good
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Selling the idea of irradiated food to consumers has been
an uphill battle. The word "irradiated" is
a little too close to "radiation" for comfort. So
last year congress included a clause in the 2002 Farm Act
that broadened the definition of pasteurization. This
change was specifically designed so that meat processors and
retailers could use the term "cold pasteurized"
rather than "irradiation."
But another even more convenient way to ease consumers' fears
is to simply mislead them.
The Consumer Reports research discovered two promotional
statements for irradiated meat to be untrue. A flyer
from one supermarket chain stated that irradiation "eliminates
any bacteria that might exist in food." The CR
report established
that this is untrue, but this was a known fact long before
the current issue of CR hit the stands. But it also gives
the impression that the meat can't be contaminated, which
could easily lead to lax handling and cooking by consumers.
The second statement comes from a pamphlet put out by SureBeam,
one of the leading food irradiators. The claim: "You
can't taste the difference."
Well... not quite, says CR. According to CR's taste
test in which tasters were not aware if they were eating normal
or irradiated meat, the irradiated beef and chicken samples
were picked out by the tasters in well over half the matchups.
The irradiated meat had what was described as a "slight
but distinct off taste and smell," and was compared to
the aroma of singed hair.
Yum! Would you like a side of E. coli with that?
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You are what you irradiate
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In his "Daily Dose" e-letter, William Campbell
Douglass, M.D., noted another problem with irradiation. In
"Zap! Your food is safe" (8/16/02), Dr. Douglass
wrote, "If irradiated
food is subsequently mishandled... and becomes contaminated
with a disease-causing organism, the food will lack the competing
beneficial organisms that could otherwise inhibit its growth.
This is comparable to the situation in your intestine.
There are trillions of bacteria in your gut, but they are
friendly agents when in that environment. If you were
to irradiate your gut, you would kill these organisms and
there would be a foreign invasion that would probably kill
you."
And as if all of that weren't enough, last year a German
study showed that a "unique byproduct" created when
fat is irradiated may have promoted tumor development in laboratory
animals. Further studies were called for and are apparently
underway. In response, the European Union has suspended
the irradiation of beef and other foods (except for certain
spices and herbs) until research can demonstrate that
irradiation is safe.
What a concept! Start with thorough testing. THEN, if safety
is completely assured, proceed with the technology.
Gee, why didn't WE think of that?
In a New York Times article about irradiation last year,
Carol Tucker Foreman (the director of the Food Policy Institute
at the Consumer Federation of America) stressed the uncertain
health risks of irradiation, saying, "There is nowhere
in the world where a large population has eaten large amounts
of irradiated food over a long period of time."
In other words, every time someone picks up a package of
irradiated ground beef at their neighborhood grocery, and
every time they order chicken or steak from a restaurant that
buys irradiated meat, they're participating in an experiment
they didn't even know they signed up for.
At least this way, SureBeam and other irradiation companies
don't have to waste a lot of money buying laboratory guinea
pigs.
Can you beleive this is going on in your country?
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