The list of solutions to some of our most challenging food safety and production problems that are being rejected by anti-technology groups continues to grow. We have, and have had for several decades, the ability to prevent millions of human deaths, save billions of dollars in waste, and eliminate entire classes of diseases.

Yet politics, celebrity activism and public opinion have prevented us from putting these tools to work. From banning DDT in the 60s to biotechnology in the 70s to irradiation in the 90s, we have tossed proven solutions on the junk pile because we were afraid of the technology that created them.

As a result, our world has suffered needless death and disease on a global scale that dwarfs the massacres, holocausts and genocides of history. Well, on that happy note, let me continue.
Last month, the Food and Drug Administration approved irradiation for lettuce.

“FDA permission to irradiate produce is the biggest step forward in U.S. food safety since irradiation was approved for meat in 1990,” said the Center for Global Food Issues (CGFI).

“In 2006, there were an estimated 50 billion servings of green, leafy salads served in this country, and there were approximately 1,200 people made ill,” said Sam Beattie of Iowa State University.
Food recalls have become common and make news when they occur. Recently, an international food scare occurred when people appeared to be getting sick from eating tomatoes.

It took weeks and millions of dollars to track down the source of the contamination. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that irradiation of high risk foods - certainly including hamburger, poultry, spinach and lettuce - could prevent up to a million cases of food poisoning per year, more than 6,000 catastrophic illnesses, and hundreds of American deaths - mostly children.

The reason irradiation has not been adopted by the food industry is consumer, organic and environmental activist groups have been successful in exploiting the public’s fear of anything remotely related to nuclear radiation. They say the solution is for food processors to clean up their acts and for the government to more tightly regulate food processing plants.

Yet, the people who died from eating spinach contaminated with E. coli O157 a couple of years ago had eaten organically grown spinach, carefully washed and packed in a state-approved processing facility.

“Organic systems and washing don’t eliminate the bacteria,” said CGFI.

Irradiation would not be a solution if it posed any kind of health risk, but there has been no evidence that is the case. Irradiation does not make food radioactive; does not change the texture, flavor, or nutritional content of food; and has not been proven by private or government research to pose a threat to human health.

Critics of the technology will cite studies that have “observed health problems in lab animals fed irradiated foods.” While far from a conclusive link, these observations should continue to be studied.

In the meantime, we should not condemn millions of consumers to needless risk by not doing what we can to make our food safer.
Billions of times each day, American consumers toss food into a microwave oven and zap it with radiation to heat it up.

Why not use a very small amount of the same technology to make our food safer before it ever gets to our kitchens?

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Gary Truitt may write to him in care of this publication.