FOOD IRRADIATION:

A Public Health Measure Long Overdue! Fall 1999

by James H. Steele, D.V.M., M.P.H.

Public health scientists have had an interest in food irradiation for more than 100 years. The first investigations occurred within a few years of the discovery of X-ray/short wavelength by the German physicist Roentgen in 1895. German and French scientists carried on studies to pasteurize food by radiation up to the war years, 1914. The problem at that time was that irradiated foods had an unacceptable taste. In 1915, the X-ray was reported to be effective in killing trichina cysts in pork meat. Later, the U.S. Department of Agriculture demonstrated that X-rays/short wavelengths of energy, could kill disease-causing organisms and halt food spoilage.

As food irradiation pioneer Dr. Edward Josephson pointed out in a recent review, food irradiation was the first entirely new method of preserving food since the thermal canning and pasteurization of wine, beer, and milk in the 19th century.1 These methods of food preservation were all considered to be processes, but in 1958, under pressure from protesters, the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act designated food irradiation as an “additive.” Scientific research has never found evidence to call radiation an “additive” that remained in food; this unfair designation has been used to keep the technology from being used.

In the United States, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology instituted the first studies of food irradiation in 1899. During the first half of the 20th century, many more studies were undertaken to learn how ionizing radiation could be used to provide more and safer foods to humanity on a worldwide basis. However, the paucity of suitable radiation sources and their high cost prevented the full benefits of irradiation from being realized for use in food and biomedical research.

Since 1950, many beneficial effects of ionizing radiation have been observed, and documented. In addition to its potential to reduce the incidence of foodborne diseases, food irradiation can inhibit post-harvest sprouting in potatoes and onions; disinfest fruits, vegetables, and grains of insects; delay ripening in fruits; eliminate pathogens, using substerilization doses in meat, seafood, fruits, poultry, fruit juices, and vegetables; and, with sterilization doses, produce an array of prepackaged meats, poultry, and seafood, which can keep for years without refrigeration. In addition, irradiation can be used to eliminate pests such as the screw worm fly, which preys on cattle, the Mediterranean fruit fly, and the tsetse fly, by the release of sterile insects.2

Worries about nuclear weapons, combined with an anti-progress ideology, began to stymie food irradiation research after the war. Although there was now an adequate supply of gamma rays—the high-energy, short-wavelength rays given off by radionuclides—lawmakers became convinced by the anti-technology faction to control the development of nuclear technology for treating foods.

In 1958, when the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was passed by the U.S. Congress, there were many unanswered questions: Would food be made radioactive? What would be the effect of this additional radioactivity above that of background upon humans? Would there be new toxic products formed in the irradiated foods? Would carcinogens be formed? Would there be excessive loss of nutrients? Would molecular fragments from packaging materials migrate onto the foods in amounts derogatory to the health of consumers? In the killing of pathogens, would new microbiological problems evolve? What radiation doses would be safe to use? What effect would radiation have on taste, odor, color, texture of the food?

Also, what adverse effect, if any, would result to the environment should there be accidents? What sources of radiation (gamma and machine) and what doses would be suitable for irradiation?

The U.S. Congress—with successful lobbying by well-known public figures in the movie and entertainment circles—convinced Congress to keep food irradiation under tight control. To do this, a legal fiction was created that ionizing radiation used to treat food is a “food additive.” This part of the 1958 law, known as the Delaney Clause, assured that no irradiated food could be approved for consumption without a lengthy drawn-out procedure, thereby singling out and stigmatizing foods so treated, by requiring a long period for research and petition writing to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and then many months or years for evaluation...

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