Irradiated veggies—yay or nay?

Per today's New York Times, the Food and Drug Administration has decided to let produce suppliers irradiate some of our fruits and vegetables, ostensibly to destroy dangerous food-borne bacteria. Depending on where you stand, this is either a huge knee-jerk reaction or smart preventive measure. 

According to an FDA official, "these irradiated foods are not less safe than others and the doses are effective i reducing the level of disease-causing microorganisms." An L.A. Times article published last spring says typical chlorine baths used to wash produce just don't do the job. Brendan Nemira, a microbiologist who spoke to the paper, said:

“Irradiation kills E. coli where chlorine doesn’t. We used pretty aggressive levels of chlorine and found they weren’t very effective at all. But when you have E. coli inside a leaf, and you irradiate it, the E. coli dies.”

But there are concerns from the other side. The Washington Post quotes Bill Freese, a science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety as saying,  "Having irradiation of foods provides a disincentive for animal factories and other food production facilities to clean up their act." Besides, some scientists aren't sure that consuming small amounts of radiation is safe for humans. What if there's a cumulative effect, for starters? 

The Center for Food Safety says "radiation can do strange things to food," including shrinking its nutritional value and introducing potentially carcinogenic substances into them. Proper labeling would help—at least we'd know if we were buying irradiated produce—but that protocol may be out the window. 

So what are we to do? How can we think before we eat? Buying organic helps, but as OrganicConsumers.org itself says, nonorganic food supply should "be safe and environmentally sustainable," too.

—CityMom

Comments

[Jersey Girl]

Certified USDA organic veggies are not irradiated, as far as we can trust that label -- not that they are easy to find in your average grocery store!