Irradiated Meat is the Only Safe Meat
Germs In Our Food Can Be Deadly
E. coli is a killer. If your child eats even 100 E. coli O157:H7 bacteria, she can end up with bloody diarrhea and dehydration followed by hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). HUS is caused by a bacterial toxin that shreds red blood cells and causes the kidneys to shut down. People with HUS need hospital treatment, usually in the intensive care unit including dialysis. The damage may be so severe that a kidney transplant may be necessary. Children and the elderly have the greatest risk of HUS and some die. Ground beef, lettuce and spinach have been the most frequent causes of E. coli outbreaks in the U.S. Right now, E. coli germs are found in about one of every 250 samples of ground beef that are tested.
Salmonella and Listeria are other disease-causing bacteria that are sometimes found in food, including poultry, eggs, ground beef and produce. Salmonella usually causes diarrhea, but can be more serious - and is sometimes fatal - for infants and the elderly.
Listeria is especially serious for pregnant women, infants, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems. It causes miscarriages, stillbirths, meningitis and blood poisoning. Listeria is a killer – a recent Listeria outbreak in Canada caused by contaminated cold cuts killed 20 people.
How would you feel if your son died of HUS next week when it could have been prevented by irradiating the hamburger he’ll eat tonight?
Cleanliness Alone Isn't Enough
Nationally, two percent of surgeries are followed by a wound infection. When we can’t prevent every infection in sterile operating rooms, it’s unrealistic to think that E. coli germs can be completely eliminated from food by trying to make processing even more sanitary than it already is. Think about the millions of Staph and Strep germs that are on your hands right now. No matter how much you scrub, there will still be some germs on your skin. It’s the same with food processing. The germs that food animals carry on and in their bodies and that come from birds, rodents and other animals in the fields where plants are grown can be reduced through cleanliness in the processing plant, but some bacteria will always remain. Irradiation is needed as a final step in processing ground beef, lettuce, spinach, cold cuts and hot dogs to protect our children against deadly germs that sometimes find their way into our food supply.
Natural, Organic and Small Producer Foods Aren't Safer!
Buying organic or naturally produced food does not protect you against E. coli or other germs in food. Buying beef from a small producer doesn’t either. A Minnesota study showed that people who bought their beef from local producers were at higher risk of getting sick from E. coli. Natural beef from Whole Foods caused an E. coli outbreak in the Northeast this past summer. Organic spinach was implicated in the national E. coli outbreak in 2006 that made nearly 300 people sick and killed three. Unpasteurized, natural apple juice was the source for an E. coli outbreak on the West Coast in 1996. Alfalfa sprouts have caused a number of E. coli outbreaks.
Irradiation is Safe!
Food is irradiated by exposing it very briefly to an electron beam similar to that found in a television tube, x-rays or gamma rays from cobalt – just enough to kill the germs. No radioactive materials are added to the food and it is not radioactive after processing. Just as you wouldn’t think twice about holding your crying daughter after she got an x-ray of her broken arm, you don’t have to worry about being exposed to radiation from irradiated food.
Some have raised concerns about the risk of cancer from chemicals found in food that has been irradiated. These compounds are found at extremely low levels and are very, very similar to compounds created during ordinary cooking of food. No increased risk of cancer has been found in animals fed irradiated food. Theoretical concerns about a miniscule risk of cancer many years in the future are far outweighed by the very real risk of your child getting seriously ill and dying today from E. coli or another foodborne disease.
Irradiated Food is Wholesome
Some are concerned that irradiation is being used to mask dirty or spoiled food or that irradiation reduces the nutritional value of food or changes the flavor. None of these are true. Food irradiation is used in addition to the sanitary practices that are already in place and mandated by state and federal regulators. Irradiation makes food last longer by killing fungus, mold and bacteria that cause food to spoil. Irradiated food doesn’t just appear fresher; it is fresher and will keep longer in your refrigerator. Nutritional analysis shows that changes in the nutritional value of food are insignificant and less than what would occur with normal cooking. While some professional food tasters have found a slight difference in flavor, most people (including me!) can’t tell the difference. Try it yourself! You can get irradiated hamburgers from Omaha Steaks and Schwann’s and irradiated ground beef at Wegman’s in the Northeast and Publix in the southeast.
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This article by this "medical epidemiologist" is totally unraveled by the Food & Water Watch comment below! Thank you Ms. Nestor!!!! My question for this doctor is: Have you ever received any funding in any form whatsoever from the Meat/Dairy Industry or their lobbying groups or from the USDA, who is often staffed/managed by former Meat/Dairy Industry head honchos? Sure sounds like it! You, a doctor, do not show concern for feces-laden meat being eaten by humans 'cause you just irradiate it, huh? Yeah, right. Thanks but no thanks, doc.
PS--Why don't you order the MadCowTaco for lunch? Yum! Don't worry! It's IRRADIATED!!!!!!!!
Dr. Hull is incorrect when he says that people should not be concerned that "irradiation is being used to mask dirty. . . food" or that "sanitary practices . . . are already in place and mandated by state and federal regulators". Ask anyone sickened by products from the current FDA peanut recall about government mandates. And, although meat is regulated by USDA, Dr. Hull’s reassurances about current protections are no more well-founded or appropriate.
Under a new USDA inspection system, implemented in 1998, government inspectors lost much of their power to intervene to protect consumers (can you say 'fox guarding the henhouse'?). The system ostensibly added improvements, such as microbial testing, but examination of the adopted methods has shown repeatedly that procedures have been lax and that USDA added more scientific rhetoric than effective control of E. coli O157:H7 (an enteric pathogen – one harbored in an animal’s intestine).
In fact, after the flood of E. coli O157:H7 recalls and outbreaks in 2007, USDA held two 2-day meetings in 2008 to discuss some regulatory inadequacies involving the related "scientific" techniques:
www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/Ecoli_transcript_040908.pdf
www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/Ecoli_transcript_041008.pdf
www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/Sampling_101408.pdf
www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/Sampling_101508.pdf
At these meetings, it became clear that USDA applies its seal of approval based on industry’s microbial sampling programs, which are typically much less effective than claimed. The public is outraged by the government’s lack of response to previous evidence of salmonella contamination at the Peanut Corporation of America, but USDA does little when company tests reveal pathogenic contamination. USDA rarely traced back to source plants to recover all potentially contaminated product even when ITS OWN testing found contamination at the tips of the distribution icebergs – generally, traceback is only conducted after consumers get sick or die.
Most importantly, it was the adoption of chemical and hot water “interventions” that was used to justify the decrease in government oversight. Between 1998 and 2003, USDA’s policy was to not even test ground beef at plants using these interventions because "science" demonstrated that product from these plants posed the least risk. But some of the largest recalls and outbreaks still come from slaughter plants using multiple interventions. Check them out at USDA's recall website and do a little research on intervention use by the associated companies:
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fsis_Recalls/Recall_Case_Archive/index.asp
Interventions have been demonstrated to be effective against invisible contamination, . . . when used exactly as directed. But companies send smears, dabs, even chunks of fecal contamination through the machines, expecting the impossible. And, despite USDA’s zero-tolerance claim, even when inspectors have time to spot the filth, they are prohibited from taking regulatory action unless the feces has texture! (Yes, I'm aware that visual inspection cannot detect enteric pathogens, but ignoring visible feces for that reason is like letting someone walk into a bank with a gun drawn because everyone else could have concealed weapons.)
Finally, plants started focusing interventions and attention on ground products and less on the larger cuts of beef, in part because contamination on these cuts is not, officially, adulteration! USDA has been aware that small plants and supermarkets were using these products to make their own ground beef, and a 2007 survey revealed that more plants use these cuts for ground beef than any other beef component – but the practice still has not been prohibited. So much for adequate federal oversight and safety mandates!
Given USDA's deregulatory response to the adoption of chemical interventions (which did not enjoy nearly the same hype as irradiation does) it is likely that large companies will push the government to reduce oversight even further if products are treated with this latest “silver bullet”. And equally reasonable to assume that USDA will back off again! Plant managers will overestimate the effectiveness and force workers to push more filthy beef through the machine and out the door, and consumers will again be lulled into a temporary overconfidence about the safety of product they feed their families.
Ignoring the issue of whether Dr. Hull is informed enough about what irradiation does to the safety of food, it is apparent that he is largely ignorant of the blatant and systemic gaps in federal food safety regulations and the agencies that are responsible for them. Consumers would benefit if he, and others pushing such a radical change, would learn about and consider the realities of industrial meat production before throwing their titles behind claims that they have not thoroughly researched.
Felicia Nestor
Senior Policy Analyst
Food & Water Watch