Posted on 12/18/2006 5:31:44 AM PST by Brilliant
The recent E. coli outbreaks are playing as a familiar morality tale of too little regulation. The real story is a much bigger scandal: How special interests have blocked approval of a technology that could sanitize fruits and vegetables...
The technology is known as food "irradiation," a process that propels gamma rays into meat, poultry and produce in order to kill most insects and bacteria. It is similar to milk pasteurization, and it's a shame some food marketer didn't call it that from the beginning because its safety and health benefits are well established. The American Medical Association, the Centers for Disease Control... the Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization have all certified that a big reduction in disease could result from irradiating...
Says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Minnesota: "If even 50% of meat and poultry consumed in the United States were irradiated, the potential impact on foodborne disease would be a reduction in 900,000 cases, and 350 deaths." A 2005 CDC assessment agrees: "Food irradiation is a logical next step to reducing the burden of food borne diseases..."
We asked several leading health scientists whether food irradiation could have prevented the E. coli outbreak at Taco Bell... "Almost certainly, yes," says Dennis Olson, who runs a research programs on food irradiation at Iowa State University...
So what's stopping irradiation? The answer is a combination of political pressure, media scare tactics and bureaucratic and industry timidity. And it starts with organic food groups and such left-wing pressure groups as Public Citizen that have engaged in a fright campaign to persuade Americans that irradiation causes cancer and disease. Something called the Stop Food Irradiation Project tells consumers to tell grocers not to carry irradiated foods...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Ahhhh! We're all going to die of radiation poisoning like Litvinenko! It's a Muslim plot! Yi-yi-yi-yi-yi!
There. I've had my daily wacko-vent.
Wonder if it works on Mad Cow...
"greening" comes to mind; the enviros will never protest it.
There was an article a week or so ago indicating the 80 some percent of all fresh chicken tested positive for bacteria. It was salmonella and I belieive listeria.
I would be in favor of irradiation.
No.
So it's strong enough to kill all bacteria but not strong enough to have any deleterious effects on food.
Ya, I'd like my hamburger pink again...
It depends on what you mean by "deleterious".
Cooking most foods has "deleterious" affects in one form or another.
I think that is very unlikely.
It is much more likely that the cases were simply missed. It hasn't been all that long that these bacteria could be analyzed at the DNA level to know if the "outbreak" was really the same strain or separate events.
It's the same as shining light on the food for a few seconds, except that the "light" has a shorter wavelength than visible light.
The only way this statement could make sense is to believe that lobbyists for the Health Care Industry have put pressure on politicians because they don't want to lose the billions they make annually from treating food borne diseases.
Is that what the WSJ is implying here?
You can eat Bison rare as the Bison does not carry e-coli.
Ostrich and Emu are also supposed to be clear of e-coli, but, I am not sure I could cozy up to a buzzard burger..
btt
Well... the campesino's never would never have dreamed of pissing on the spinach back then.
Modern science brings with it the burden of modern knowledge.
The big deal with irradiation actually isn't e. coli but quads of energy.
By irradiating food it can be kept longer at less cost with far less energy use. This is particularly so with things we like to eat "fresh" and with meat and meat byproducts.
Enough quads of energy can be saved in the national grid to pay for all our air conditioning, or most of the energy we get from Middle Eastern oil.
Those who oppose irradiation are actually demanding we keep a large army in Iraq into the indefinite future. And when they aren't doing that, they are simultaneously demanding we bow down and kiss Chavez' (Castro's buddy) feet.
Irradiation opponents are the class enemy of today.
Not the health care industry. It's these leftwing organizations that popularize junk science, mainly. The article points out that the AMA, WHO, and FDA all say that food irradiation is a good thing.
The problem is that people have no clue what "irradiation" really is. They should have named it something else.
***
You just reminded me of a time when irradiated milk was first introduced some years back. A woman I worked with at the time kept referring to it as "irritated milk." :)
I thought e.coli contamination in beef was due to less than perfect butchering. Bison don't carry e.coli in their gut?
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