The Assault (Killing) of Raw foods in America

[Veli]

I'm sharing this with you all, because it's very important. For those not in the U.S., consider yourselves lucky. The U.S. is on the decline, and is led by greedy corporations that are trying to sabotage the health of Americans-- degrading & eliminating our natural food supply (fruits and vegetables) to radiated sterilized garbage. All so they can fund the pockets of the health care systems while forcing unsuspecting Americans to rely on medical drugs and the health care system for the mounting rates of disease taking over our country.

If you are in America the below article from the health ranger (naturalnews.com) is very important.

Please contact your congressman, and vegans tell 10 people you know, so we can get the word out, on what's going on... thanks


http://www.naturalnews.com/023945.html

FDA Unleashes Mass Irradiation of Spinach, Lettuce and Other Vegetables
(NaturalNews) The FDA has announced that beginning today, spinach and lettuce sold across the United States may now be secretly irradiated before it reaches grocery store shelves. What's "secret" about it? The FDA previously decided that irradiation warning stickers would not be required on any food items because it would be "too confusing to consumers." (The word IRRADIATION apparently has too many letters to be understood to food buyers.) Thus, irradiated foods will not be labeled as such, and consumers are going to be left in the dark about all this (except for those who actually eat the irradiated food, in which case they will glow in the dark).

The FDA, of course, insists that the levels of irradiation used to kill e.coli will have no effect whatsoever on the nutritional value of the food. This astonishing statement comes from an agency that doesn't believe food has any nutritional value in the first place, so lowering the value to zero by destroying all the phytonutrients does not, in the opinion of the FDA, alter its nutritional value at all. Thus, destroying all the anti-cancer nutrients in a head of broccoli merely brings that broccoli into "compliance" as a non-functional food, according to the FDA.

Radiation, of course, destroys delicate phytochemicals in plants -- the very phytochemicals protecting consumers against cancer, heart disease, high cholesterol, inflammation and other diseases. Microwaving broccoli, for example, destroys up to 98% of its anti-cancer nutrients. (The FDA has not yet acknowledged this scientific fact, either.) In a similar way, irradiating food destroys much of its nutritional content, including vitamins, carotenoids, anthocyanins and other delicate protective nutrients that are right now providing the last, desperate nutritional defense against the American diet of meat, milk, fried foods and processed junk.....

continued on naturalnews.com http://www.naturalnews.com/023945.html

[Veli]

For those who frequent restaurants (i avoid them as much as possible), there's an online petition from the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), telling U.S. restaurants to respect consumer's rights to know, if they use irradiated foods.

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o...ition_KEY=1360


The Food and Drug Administration has okayed the irradiation of lettuce and spinach. Food irradiation is the process of exposing food to ionizing radiation in order to destroy disease causing pathogens, like bacteria and viruses.
Irradiating food makes food more dangerous, not safer.

Some major concerns with food irradiation include:

-The formation of free radicals, which can set off chain reactions in the body that destroy antioxidants, tear apart cell membranes, and make the body more susceptible to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, liver damage, muscular breakdown and other serious problems.
-Serious health problems in laboratory testing, including premature death, fatal internal bleeding, cancer, stillbirths and other reproductive problems, mutations and other genetic damage, organ malfunctions, stunted growth and vitamin deficiencies.
-The creating of mutant forms of dangerous bacteria, like E. coli and Salmonella
-Nutrient loss in foods, including the destruction of vitamins and essential fatty acids.
-The formation of carcinogenic chemicals, like benzen and toluene.
While irradiated lettuce and spinach must be labeled in supermarkets, there are currently no labally requirements for restaurants serving irradiated produce or other items. Patrons and clients may consume irradiated lettuce and spinach in the future without their knowledge, nor consent.

Please sign OCA's petition to the National Restaurant Association, urging them to adopt a policy to respect consumer's right to know and
For more information, please visit the Organic Consumers Association's "Stop Food Irradiation Project" Campaign center.

[Qaxt]

It makes me very angry that they don't label pasteurization or irradiation on various foods, and am glad to know that it's also done on lettuces.

However, that article seems to degenerate into "DOWN WITH FDA" and a bit too conspiracy theory for me. But, in essence, I really enjoyed what the article had to say. Thanks for sharing.

[Veli]

Some facts about FDA:



# of deaths from Pharmaceutical, (FDA approved) drugs per year: 106,000 (per Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) 1998
http://www.healingdaily.com/conditio...-companies.htm


# of people killed during a recent e.coli outbreak from tainted spinach shipped from Mexico to U.S: 3 deaths, 200 sick.


FDA believes it is necessary to irradiate vegetables after 3 deaths occur from poorly inspected spinach during shipping to U.S. in August 2008. And only takes 1 week after the occurence for the FDA to enforce this new irradiation policy August 22.

Yet, FDA doesn't believe it necessary to increase the number of regulations and bans on pharmaceutical drugs that kill on average 106,000 Americans, or 300 per day per year since 1998.

The FDA won't tell you: E.coli bacteria originates and is spread from farm animals or animal wastes carried away by water runoff.
What this means to vegans (animal rights activists): poor farming conditions (unsanitary living of animals, pigs, cows) will continue to be allowed. As long as the fruits and vegetables that come into contact with the animal E. Coli are irradiated before they get to the American consumer, the factory farms can continue their poor treatment and living conditions of animals. This allows the true source of the problem to be ignored, covered up and allowed to continue.




More facts:

FDA lobbied congress for bill to regulate all healthfood supplements, holistic treatments, and natural alternatives as drugs-- April 2008 (meaning any health supplement that provides nutritional benefits must be taken from the shelves and get approval from the FDA to be sold, then must be reclassified as a drug.)
---luckily with outrage from the natural health and holistic community, the bill was overturned.

FDA rules High Fructose Corn Syrup is natural in 2008. (HFCS is a cheap, government subsidized, highly refined sweetener from genetically modified corn and gmo enzymes. Found in soft drinks, candy, etc. Incorporated into American food supply starting in 1970s-- correlates with the sharp rise of obesity, juvenile diabetes seen over the past 30 years. Numerous studies have shown it to cause obesity and diabetes in rats)

http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Fin...DA-in-a-letter

http://www.slashfood.com/2008/07/10/...up-is-natural/


FDA approves aspartame as safe (1981), admist scientific studies that it is potentially harmful neurotoxin/causes brain tumors. More scientific studies are proving this and testimonies of people whom have removed aspartame from their diets can be found on the internet. Aspartame is a deadly neurotoxin found in gum, candy, sugar-free diet sodas/products.
http://www.mercola.com/article/aspartame/fda.htm


And for the meat eaters: FDA says cloned meat is safe (Jan 2008):
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/15/tech/main3715727.shtml

The FDA claims that cloned meat and milk are safe, in fact so much like ordinary meat and milk that they need not be checked or labeled.

One Study on cloned animals:

Pre-Natal Failures: Only a small percentage of cloned pregnancies result in live births. A 2007 study found that animal cloning failure rates remain as high as 90 percent
Surrogate (Host) Suffering: “Host mothers” face grave suffering much of which is caused by inordinately high rates of spontaneous abortions. Cloning often leads to a condition known as “large-offspring syndrome,” whereby cloned offspring grow abnormally large, causing early-term and stressful caesarian deliveries. In one cattle cloning project, 3 out of 12 surrogate mothers died during pregnancy.

Post-Natal Animal Health: Most cloned animals born on a farm, outside a veterinary hospital, have little chance of surviving. Those animals that manage to survive until birth are likely to suffer a wide range of health defects and deformities including: enlarged tongues; squashed faces; intestinal blockages; immune deficiencies; diabetes; high rates of heart and lung damage; kidney failure; and brain abnormalities.

My last comment:

Policy of the FDA is to create a public scare, or panic by allowing a single incident to occur (E.Coli poisoning) and get uninformed Americans scared, allowing them to pass regulations that they would not normally be able to pass as easily, due to our looming uneducated fears. You got to remember, all most Americans are concerned about, is gas prices, wages and health care. The FDA and government knows this, that we do not read between the lines: taking everything for face value-- and they use it to their advantage, with each new regulation they impose. They appear to help calm our uneducated fears while in actuality taking away our very freedoms.

[Veli]

Some FAQs about food irradiation
http://www.organicconsumers.org/irradlink.cfm


1. What is food irradiation?
Bombardment of a food by ionizing radiation: "gamma rays" from nuclear material, x-rays or high-speed electrons from electronic guns. They are used to kill bacteria in the food. Electrons are knocked off molecules and ricochet around in the food. They break up cell walls, slice and dice chromosomes, kill enzymes, and create free radicals (oxygen atoms missing an electron).

These free radicals recombine to form stable compounds, or continue their destructive path. Some of the compounds created are known to be cancer-causing (formaldehyde, benzene, lipid peroxides). Others have never been seen or studied before. These new compounds are called Unique Radiolytic Products (URPs).

Scientists have not studied the long-term effects on humans of a diet of irradiated foods containing various amounts of URPs. Therefore, we cannot say that URPs have no health effects, or that a diet of irradiated food is safe.

Food irradiation is not the same as microwaving. Gamma rays, x-rays and electron beams carry more energy than microwaves. They also affect the food differently: microwaves heat the food, but irradiation does not.

Irradiated food does not become radioactive unless there is equipment error or human error.

Very tiny amounts of radioactivity can be created by electron-beam irradiation. They decay rapidly, but may cause problems if irradiated foods that have not been stored are eaten regularly. For this reason, the Government of India decided not to allow irradiation of wheat, a major food in many people’s diets.
The doses permitted by the FDA for food irradiation vary by the food. For fruits and vegetables, a maximum dose of 100,00 rads (1 kiloGray), for poultry, 450,000 rads (4.5 kiloGray), for red meat, 700,000 rads (7 kiloGray), for spices 3,000,000 rads (30 kiloGray). Comparisons to medical x-rays vary, but even the 1 kiloGray dose is equivalent to millions of chest x-rays. One comparison provided by Samuel Epstein, M.D., is 150 million x-rays = the 4.5 kiloGray dose.

However, the Codex Alimentarius (the international body that sets standards for world trade in food) is currently considering an increase in the allowable dose for irradiated foods. The Codex would permit any dose to be used on foods; in other words, the only limit would be the changes to the food’s taste, texture, storage characteristics, not the health effects of irradiated food. The Codex committee is stacked with representatives of industry. If the Codex approves this proposal, it will put tremendous pressure on all countries that have approved irradiation for some foods to accept irradiated imports regardless of the dose, and to increase the permitted doses of irradiation on foods for domestic consumption. The Codex has postponed a decision on this proposal until Spring 2003. The Codex proposal appears to be modeled after Brazil’s irradiation policy, which allows any dose for any food. (The only limit is cosmetic and taste damage to a food.) Brazil is a big exporter of both meat and produce, and it would benefit from the Codex proposal. At present, Brazil has to limit its irradiation doses to the doses permitted in the various countries it exports to.

2. What is the status of food irradiation in the U.S. and abroad?
· Food irradiation is permitted in more than 40 countries. In the US, it is approved for beef, pork, poultry, shell eggs, fruits, vegetables, imported fruits and vegetables, wheat, wheat flour, seeds for sprouting, herbs and spices. In August 1999, a food industry coalition asked the FDA to also approve irradiation for deli meats, frozen foods, prepared fresh foods, fresh juices, seeds and sprouts, but this has not been approved yet. The FDA is considering a petition to irradiate crustaceans and mollusks. Foods not yet requested for irradiation are: dairy (which is already pasteurized) and a few foods like honey and coffee. Bacon was approved for irradiation in 1963. The approval was taken away in 1968 because animals fed irradiated bacon showed adverse health effects. In the US, small amounts of irradiated meat, fruit and vegetables have been test-marketed in the last 15 years. Some spices, supplement ingredients, garlic and herb teas are irradiated (nobody knows the total; some guesses are 5-15% of spices). Since 2000, companies that produce over 75% of the U.S.'s 9 billion pounds/year of ground beef and approximately 50% of the nearly 35 billion pounds/year of poultry have signed agreements to use irradiation, and some have started irradiating. Irradiated ground beef is now available in about 10 supermarket chains nationwide. Some Hawaiian papayas are irradiated, and some fruits and vegetables from Florida. It’s likely other fruits and vegetables in the US are irradiated, but OCA doesn’t have confirmation. Check the labels on the fruits or boxes.

3. How are foods affected by irradiation?
· Some vitamins, like A, C, E, K and some B complex vitamins, are damaged. From 5% up to 80%, depending on how long the food is stored. Some of these vitamins are natural anti-oxidants: that is, they destroy dangerous free radicals in the body. Irradiation both a) increases the amount of free radicals in a food, and b) damages the vitamins necessary to neutralize the free radicals! Free radicals are implicated in many diseases.
· Over 95% of bacteria in the food are killed: both bad bacteria, like E. coli, and good bacteria, like those with telltale odors that indicate spoilage. Viruses (like the Norwalk virus in shellfish) and the bacteria that causes botulism are not killed.
Irradiated raw foods that are purchased to be eaten raw are the most damaged, because they have the nutrition of cooked food and the appearance of fresh food. In addition to creating more free radicals, irradiation deactivates the enzymes in fresh foods that are vital for optimal digestion and metabolism. The bacteria-killing, enzyme-depletion and vitamin-depletion effects of irradiation are similar to cooking. Irradiated cooked fresh foods have even fewer nutrients than nonirradiated cooked foods.
· Irradiation will not reduce the use of chemicals on food. It is applied after harvest. The effect of irradiation on complex chemicals such as pesticides in the food has not been studied.
· Aflatoxin, a highly carcinogenic substance produced by molds, is produced in greater quantities in irradiated food (because the bacteria that crowd it out have been killed). Irradiation affects different foods in different ways. Some develop off-flavors, or mushy textures, or become more susceptible to molds and fungus. When potatoes sprout, they develop a green color, which indicates the presence of the poisonous chemical solanine. When irradiated potatoes sprout, they do not turn green even when solanine is present. The bacterium that causes botulism is not killed by irradiation, but its natural enemies are. Food may be contaminated without any warning smell. This can be a big problem for meat that is irradiated in a sealed package.
· Irradiated food can be stored for longer periods of time. However, this benefits packers, exporters and retailers, rather than consumers.

4. How are humans affected by eating irradiated food?
We don’t know. There have been no long-term human studies, and almost no studies on children. The FDA based its approval of irradiation to treat meat products on only 7 animal studies of 441 studies submitted, and these 7 either showed health effects or had obvious scientific flaws like using a dose of radiation much lower than the FDA’s permitted ;maximum. In fact, animal studies have shown many health effects, such as tumors, kidney failure, death of offspring and miscarriages. Irradiation for fruits and vegetables was based on a theoretical calculation of the danger of the new chemicals that were created, not on animal studies.
We do know that irradiation can damage vitamins A, C, E, K, B1, B2, B3, B6 and folic acid, up to 80%, depending on the vitamin and how long the foods are stored. People who rely on fresh foods for their vitamins may suffer vitamin deficiencies. It is ironic that the vitamins that are destroyed are those needed to fight the extra free radicals created by irradiation! People who eat irradiated foods will be eating them in large quantities for a long period of time—possibly for life—especially if the FDA stops requiring labels. Scientists have no idea what result this will have on human health.
Some foods may be irradiated twice, for example fresh imported mangoes in a packaged fruit salad that is also irradiated. No studies exist on the effects on these "double-dose" foods on health.
The existing science on the safety of food irradiation is totally inadequate for the FDA to unleash this technology on the public. The FDA should require labels on the food so that people can avoid irradiated foods, and so that public health officials can determine if people who ate these foods and people who avoided them have different health problems. Without labels, epidemiologists will never be able to determine the health effects of irradiated foods in the diet.

[Veli]

cont.


5. Is electron-beam or x-ray irradiation ‘better’ than nuclear irradiation?
(Ionizing radiation is NOT the same as television beams or microwaves).
· Irradiation from electron beams, x-rays and gamma rays damage the food in similar ways, and pose the same risks for human health. The dose is what is important, not the source of the radiation.
· Nuclear irradiation uses radioactive cobalt-60 or cesium-137, which can release radioactivity in transport or plant accidents. In some cases, the nuclear materials can be owned by private companies rather than the government. Safe disposal of all of the material is unlikely—several accidents have occurred in U.S. nuclear irradiators in the 1970s and 1980s, despite the U.S.’s regulatory system.
· Both nuclear and e-beam irradiation can cause serious injuries to workers in these facilities.
· At high speeds, e-beam irradiation can create tiny amounts of radioactivity in the food, which might be a health problem if irradiated foods are eaten in large quantities over long periods.
· Even if e-beam irradiation is widely used, nuclear materials will also be used. This will happen for five reasons: 1) electron-beam irradiation must be used on small, evenly shaped foods because it does not penetrate deeply. Large or irregularly shaped items (like a whole chicken) must be irradiated using x-rays or nuclear materials. 2) the source of the irradiation is not disclosed on the food label (if a label is even required). 3) The nuclear industry still wants to get rid of the cesium-137 from nuclear power stations, and the Canadian and U.S. nuclear industry want customers who need cobalt-60 to be manufactured from cobalt-59. 4) Food irradiation provides private-sector income for a nuclear facility that is primarily used for research on nuclear power or weapons. 5) Other countries that do not have cheap and reliable sources of electricity will use nuclear material to irradiate foods.

6. Why is irradiation used on foods?
To kill bacteria that cause food poisoning and spoilage. In other words, primarily to protect food companies against expensive lawsuits if someone gets sick from an undercooked burger, and the ensuing product recalls. For some products, to increase the time the food can be sold (shelf life). These sound like worthy goals until you ask, "what’s causing the problem" and "are there other solutions"
· What’s causing the problem? A variety of reasons (see Nicols Fox’s book Spoiled): for example, more food prepared away from home by uneducated food handlers, more imported foods from countries with lower sanitation standards, mass production slaughter techniques that allow cross-infection, etc. But the big problem, the one that galvanized the food industry to demand irradiation from Congress, is fecal contamination of meat and poultry that in turn leads to food poisoning
· The food industry has been pushing irradiation to save the image of meat products after numerous public releases of E. coli in ground meat, Salmonella in chickens, and Listeria in refrigerated deli meats.
· Even irradiation advocates say that irradiation does not create a sterile product, and they recommend that all existing food safety procedures be observed anyway.
· Are there other solutions? Many alternative technologies are in use and being tested. Many small changes can make a difference, because food safety can be affected anywhere from farm to table. However, the single most important change would be to remove the meat and poultry inspection functions from the USDA, because the USDA management is too closely tied to the meatpacking industry.

7. Who supports/opposes irradiation?
The public health official’s job is to improve the public health statistics now; public health advocates of irradiation are not looking at the potential long-term health consequences, and the environmental and political ramifications of the centralized food production system we have now for meat and poultry. They don’t look at the way irradiation of fruits and vegetables will greatly centralize ownership and increase imports. Food industry producers and marketers who support irradiation want to sell food and avoid lawsuits now; they are not looking at the long-term consequences. The Department of Defense wants to get rid of some of its nuclear wastes by selling them to private businesses; they are not looking at the long-term consequences.
Grassroots opponents are supported by a growing number of scientists, doctors, and epidemiologists who advocate precaution: is there a safer way to accomplish the same goal? Many alternatives for irradiation exist. (see our page on Alternatives to Irradiation) Our coalition wants the FDA to require permanent and nonmisleading labeling of irradiated food. We think irradiation has not been proven safe, and we don’t like the political and environmental results on our food system. Unlike irradiation advocates, almost none of us are paid to advocate our point of view.

8. What does labeling have to do with irradiation?
· At present, when a food has to be labeled, the words have to be "Treated with radiation" or "Treated by irradiation." This labeling requirement is popular and several FDA focus groups in 2000 told the FDA not to change it.
· But the irradiationists know that accurate labels mean consumers won’t buy irradiated food. Therefore, they sneaked a provision into a law that passed in 2002 that opens the door for food companies to use the terms ‘cold pasteurization’ and "electronic pasteurization."
· With that accomplished, the FDA is free to change the required label words. FDA will ask for public comments on its new proposal (which we expect will include the new terms) in the next few months. The new regulation will cover labeling of irradiated foods in the U.S.
· What foods must be labeled? All irradiated foods must be labeled to the first purchaser (which may be a restaurant, school, or manufacturer). Labels available to the consumer are required only for a) foods sold in their whole form (a bag of oranges, a papaya, a bag of wheat flour, a package of chicken breasts) and b) meat and chicken that is part of another food (like chicken in a TV dinner). These consumer labels have two parts: a radura and a tiny statement "Treated with radiation" or "Treated by irradiation." The statement can be the size of the typeface on the ingredient label and does not need to be any special color or design. For whole fruits and vegetables, the statement should be either on the fruit or on a display nearby (but there is no enforcement and irradiated papayas are being sold without labels now). Large food companies and irradiation advocates want the statement removed for foods that are required to be labeled to the consumer (the radura would remain). See our report on labeling status at http://www.organicconsumers.org/irrad/labelingstatus.cfm

· We believe all irradiated food should be labeled to the consumer, for these reasons: a) The existing scientific evidence on safety is inadequate, therefore people should be able to make their own decision on whether or not to buy irradiated foods. b) Irradiation-caused vitamin losses should be disclosed.
· Irradiation-sensitive labels and thermoluminescence tests can be used to prove a packaged food has been irradiated.

[Veli]

cont.


9. What’s wrong with the food that it has to be irradiated?
That’s the question that the irradiation industry never confronts in public. The answer is fecal contamination. Food poisoning from meat and poultry is primarily caused by animal feces. (Chickens are frequently contaminated with Salmonella or Campylobacter when raised in giant confinement buildings, which is the current practice).
It’s true that food is never sterile. But there’s a difference between dirt and feces. We expect food to be contaminated with dirt, dust, tiny stones, insect fragments, etc. These are unavoidable, and can be washed off. But we don’t expect food to be produced in such a way that it is routinely contaminated with feces, Salmonella or Campylobacter. Irradiation allows food producers to continue to automate slaughtering plants, replace government inspectors with industry personnel, and then ‘clean up’ the contaminated products with irradiation.
Read the book Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry by Gail Eisnitz for an investigation of the places where our meat and poultry are slaughtered. Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation also has a section on slaughterhouses.

10. What is the scientific evidence in favor of or against food irradiation?
The scientific evidence on human health effects is inadequate to prove irradiation is safe. In approving poultry for irradiation, the FDA used only 7 studies of 441 submitted, and these all have obvious methodological flaws or showed health effects in the animals. There have been no studies on humans longer than 15 weeks. In approving fruits and vegetables for irradiation, the FDA decided that the doses were too low to show animal health effects, so it used a theoretical calculation of the number of URPs created, based on a 7.5 oz. serving of irradiated food daily. They then decided this would have no human health effects. Obviously this estimate is way too low, and in addition a chemist has calculated that even this amount of irradiated food daily (one large apple) would eventually weaken the liver, which would have to process a higher load of carcinogenic and mutagenic URPs.

The key point is that the safety of food irradiation cannot be guaranteed by the scientific research existing in the year 2002. Scientific research changes. Absence of proof of effect is not proof of absence of effect. If scientists do not do studies that seek to measure unique radiolytic products produced by irradiation, they cannot say that a diet containing these products is safe. And without labels, they can’t separate people who eat irradiated food from people who don’t, and examine their health.

11. What are the environmental effects of irradiating food?
· If nuclear materials are used, radioactivity may be released in plant accidents and transport. The record is not reassuring. In the US alone, nuclear accidents have already occurred at food irradiating plants. For example, a cesium-137 spill in the State of Georgia cost the taxpayers about $47 million to clean up. Because the nuclear materials will be owned by private companies, they will have a financial incentive to dump these materials without paying the regulatory fees. This has already occurred numerous times.
· Nuclear irradiators can legally release small amounts of radioactivity into the environment. We are already exposed to increased radioactivity from atomic weapons testing fallout and nuclear plant releases. Do we want more radiation?
· Electron-beam facilities do not have environmental effects except for consuming large amounts of electricity. However, both nuclear and electronic high-energy beams can injure or kill exposed workers.
· Irradiation keeps our environmentally unsustainable system of meat and poultry production from collapsing under the weight of lawsuits for food poisoning.
· Eventually, the few bacteria that survive irradiation will multiply and work their way back into the food chain. When that happens, irradiation doses will have to be increased, damaging the foods in new and untested ways.

12. What are the socio-economic and global issues involved in food irradiation?
·E-beam and x-ray facilities are cheaper to operate than nuclear facilities and do not carry the dangers or stigma of using nuclear material. Therefore, they are being used first. However, once irradiation is established, hundreds or thousands of irradiation facilities will be built. Nuclear material will be privatized and used, both cobalt-60 and cesium-137. The Department of Energy has, at this time, decided not to reopen the nuclear Fast Flux Test Facility in Hanford, Washington, which is sitting on a very contaminated site. (The FFTF could bring in money by manufacturing cobalt-60 from cobalt-59 for food irradiation, which is now done in Canada.) However, this may change.
· There is not enough cobalt-60 now for widespread use. In countries with expensive or unreliable electricity, either cobalt-60 or cesium-137, a byproduct of nuclear weapons manufacturing, will be used. Therefore, in the big picture, any widespread use of irradiation encourages the continued use of nuclear power.
· Radiation-resistant food bacteria like E. coli may emerge. Some food bacteria survive irradiation, and another species of radiation-resistant bacteria already exists. Gene transfer between food bacteria and the resistant bacteria is quite possible.
· To be profitable, irradiation requires large amounts of food to be processed in centralized facilities. The use of irradiation speeds up the centralization of our food system. Small farmers are at a disadvantage because retailers and manufacturers will prefer the "reliability" of irradiated food from the large companies that can afford to do it.
· Because Third World people usually depend on a few foods like wheat or yams, irradiating just one of these staple foods means that a large percentage of their diet will be irradiated for years and years.
· If irradiation becomes widespread, plants will be genetically engineered so that their food products will have better taste, smell and texture after irradiation, even if the nutritional content decreases. It is possible that some of these new plants will patented to need irradiation in order to grow.

[Veli]

cont.


13. What is the status of irradiation in other countries?
It is legal in at least 35 countries, for example Russia (cereals), South Africa (fruit and vegetables), Belgium (spices and food ingredients), France (spices, mechanically deboned poultry meat), The Netherlands (spices, frozen fish and seafood), Hungary (onions and paprika), Norway (spices), Canada (seafood and pork), China (potatoes). Other foods may be irradiated also. Food irradiation has been used illegally to camouflage spoiled seafood for resale. Recently, Canadian regulatory authorities have moved closer to allowing irradiation of red meat and poultry. Australia and New Zealand recently approved irradiation for herbs, spices and teas. The European Union is trying to harmonize its rules on irradiation now.
There are organized anti-irradiation groups in several countries, including Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and European activists are closely watching the FDA policy on labeling. Because of world trade regulations, if the FDA stops requiring labels, the US will be able to force other countries to accept irradiated foods without labels, even if the other country requires labels for its own foods. For this reason, continued required U.S. labeling that is both prominent and accurate is the key to blocking use of irradiation worldwide.

14. What strategies are irradiation supporters using to convince the public that irradiation is harmless and desirable?
a. They use misleading terms such as "electronic pasteurization", "pasteurization with x-rays" and "cold pasteurization." Pasteurization is known to the public as a process of killing micro-organisms in milk and other liquids by heating them briefly to a specified temperature. The connotations of "pasteurization" and "irradiation" are quite different, because we associate pasteurization with milk, a ‘friendly’ and ‘benevolent’ food. The use of ‘pasteurization’ to mean ‘irradiation’ is therefore misleading.
First and most important, pasteurized dairy is the standard. Most American consumers cannot buy unpasteurized dairy products. We do not notice the word ‘pasteurized’ because it is the status quo. Irradiation, on the other hand, is a new technology that is NOT the status quo. Using the term ‘pasteurized’ gives irradiation an aura of stability, permanence and even friendliness. Some dictionaries list irradiation as a secondary meaning for "pasteurization"; however, calling irradiated food "pasteurized" is like calling a person with second-degree burns "sun-tanned."
- Irradiated and pasteurized dairy foods are affected differently. Unlike dairy pasteurization, irradiation does not heat the food significantly, and may last as long as several hours. Dairy pasteurization kills bacteria when the heated water ruptures the bacteria’s cell walls. Irradiation kills bacteria because free radicals bounce around in the food and penetrate the bacteria’s cell walls. The free radicals remain to do more damage to nutrients in the food.
b. They say that the changes in food caused by irradiation is similar to that caused by cooking foods. The problem here is that when we buy fresh food, we expect it to be fresh, with a full complement of vitamins and live enzymes. We don’t seek out fresh food, which is usually more expensive than canned or frozen, for second-class nutrition and unusable enzymes. Furthermore, "similar" does not mean "exactly the same." We have no long-term experience with a diet of irradiated foods, so we don’t know if the long-term effects on human health are "similar."
c. They tell us that astronauts have eaten irradiated foods, an irrelevant piece of information that unfortunately captivates nearly every journalist that hears it. These journalists don’t bother to check the NASA web site, where they would find out that exactly TWO items on the NASA menu is irradiated—beefsteak and turkey. In addition, the factoid is totally irrelevant: Astronauts are on military missions where they expect health risks greater than civilian life (unlike us). They eat irradiated foods for a short time (unlike us). And they have been told what they are eating (unlike us).
d. The only question irradiation advocates consider important is, "Does the existing scientific research prove that a diet of irradiated foods harms human health" The answer is "No, but the existing scientific research is totally inadequate to prove it is safe for human health." Advocates also ignore the equally important issue: Food irradiation is about more than human health. It’s about a sustainable food system as well. Irradiation props up industrial animal agriculture. Without irradiation, the system would collapse.

15. Can airport x-rays harm raw food?
No. The dose used in an airport x-ray is millions of times less than the dose used on irradiated fruits and vegetables. A few free radicals are created but on the level of the free radicals that are normally created during storage and ripening/decay.

16. What can I do to help?
See the Actions section of our web site, http://www.organicconsumers.org/irradlink.html. Also, contact us to be notified of action alerts.

17. I still don’t know enough to come to a definite conclusion for or against food irradiation.
Look at the issue as a whole, not just "will it hurt me to eat irradiated food?" Irradiation touches on the ecosystem of food policy: how we want our food to be produced, marketed, owned, how animals are treated, pollution, rural life and communities, and trade.
People who support food irradiation are trying to solve a problem caused by the status quo without changing the status quo. They accept factory farming and meat industry deregulation, with the resulting sanitation problems. They are trying to put a band-aid on a problem rather than solving the problem. They want to restrict the debate over food irradiation to the narrow question "Is there any science that proves that it harms human health?" They don’t want to look at the big picture, which is much greater than "what is known about irradiation’s effect on human health?"
Opponents of irradiation, on the other hand, are looking at the big picture. They don’t accept the status quo of meat industry deregulation, and they want the feces contamination problem solved at the source. They want alternative techniques for food safety to be used. They want to reverse the policies of the USDA since Reagan, which has deregulated meat inspection and led to dirtier meat. They want more environmentally sustainable and humane food production methods, better food inspection, and more locally grown food. These goals are blocked if food irradiation is used to keep the status quo. They want government to presume that irradiation is unsafe unless proved otherwise (the precautionary principle). They want labels on all irradiated foods so they can know what they are purchasing. They do not want to encourage privatization of nuclear materials. Unlike supporters of irradiation, opponents feel responsible for protecting human health and the environment for everyone, including future generations.


Organic Consumers Association
6114 Highway 61, Little Marais, Minnesota 55614 USA
Activist or Media Inquiries: (218) 226-4164, Fax: (218) 226-4157
http://www.organicconsumers.org/irradlink.html
Nonprofit organization, donations welcome
Irradiation: danila@organicconsumers.org
Other questions: info@organicconsumers.org

[Veli]

Last thing to vegans,




You can write congress or senators


Explain that you do not want irradiation of our fruits and vegetables. That bacteria contamination (E.Coli, Salmonella) poisoning comes from poor living conditions of animals that come into contact with vegetables. The vegetables are not the cause of infection, the animals and wastes that come from factory farms are the cause of contamination. We should not irradiate vegetables and destroy nutrients and the health of Americans to cover up the real cause, poor farming conditions and treatment of animals.


Letters are more effective than emails***

To find out your congressman and women contact addresses and info:
go to: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/...ory/congdir.tt

It will give you a full directory by zip code, or alphabetical.

I may come up with a printable template letter which can be used by multiple people and signed, if possible. I just need to see if i can get it uploaded, sometime soon.


If anyone follows through on this, i would like to hear what responses you received. (Please message me, if you get a response.)