Unless the Food and Water writers are lying....the following quotes are
quite damning I'd say:
The FDA reviewed 441 toxicity studies to determine the safety of
irradiated foods. Dr. Marcia van Gemert, the team leader in charge of
new food additives at the FDA and the chairperson of the committee in
charge of investigating the studies, testified that all 441 studies were
flawed.
[snip]...In fact, the FDA claimed only five of the 441 were “properly
conducted, fully adequate by 1980 toxicological standards, and able to
stand alone in support of safety.” With the shaky assurance of just
five studies, the FDA approved irradiation for the public food supply.
To make matters worse, the Department of Preventative Medicine and
Community Health of the New Jersey Medical School found two of the
studies were methodologically flawed. In a third study, animals eating
a diet of irradiated food experienced weight loss and miscarriage,
almost certainly due to irradiation-induced vitamin E dietary
deficiency. The remaining two studies investigated the effects of diets
of foods irradiated at doses below the FDA-approved general level of
100,000 rads. Thus, they cannot be used to justify food irradiation at
the levels approved by the FDA.
[snip]
> > Do you believe that irradiation is the best way to deal with the
> > problems of industrial food production?
> >
> Of course not. It is a small issue. But, IMO, it is the right tool to
> solve certain specific problems of food sanitation and safety.
Why not deal with the issues at the source of production rather than as
an afterthought?
Are you concerned about the logistics and safety of building all the
irradiation facilities?
Seems to me that by increasing the nuclear sites we will be increasing
the risk of accidents and exposures.
> What is interesting to me is the vitriolic response of the sustainable
> ag folks. It is almost like this is (along with pesticides and maybe
> GMO's) a sort of litmus test. Like you can't be an authentic
> sustainable ag person if you accept it. I think that there is a
> political root to all of this.
>
It seems very straight-forward to me. Nothing about food irradiation
fits into the lexicon of sustainable anything. No serious sustainable
ag person can support this "solution".
> Wouldn't you say that the real driving force is resistance to
> globalization and industrialization of agriculture, and that "high-tech"
> ag is villified because it is a product of global industry?
>
> Dale
Maybe. Healthy food is of such critical importance to our wellness that
maybe it just doesn't fit well into the industrial/global architecture.
To me it's the results of these systems, not the systems themselves,
that are most disturbing.
Craig
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