- In a rare opportunity to speak publicly about food
irradiation
before a captive audience of government officials and food industry
executives,
Public Citizen this week released the world's first English translation
of a recent German study revealing that a chemical formed in irradiated
food can damage DNA.
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- The study confirmed what safe-food advocates and many
pioneering researchers have known for more than 30 years: Exposing food
to ionizing radiation can lead to the formation of bizarre new chemicals
called "unique radiolytic products" that can cause serious health
problems. One such chemical, known as 2-DCB, caused "significant DNA
damage" in the colons of rats that ate the substance. The chemical
- - which, ironically, is a well-known "marker" for determining
whether food has been irradiated - - has never been found naturally in
any food on Earth.
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- The study was conducted in 1998 under the auspices of
two prominent pro-irradiation organizations. It was performed at one of
the most prestigious food irradiation labs in the world, the Federal
Research
Center for Nutrition in Karlsruhe, Germany. And it was co-funded by the
International Consultative Group on Food Irradiation, a United
Nations-sponsored
organization that promotes food irradiation worldwide.
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- Public Citizen released an English translation of the
study at a Feb. 13 meeting at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in
Washington, D.C. The meeting was held to preview an upcoming meeting of
the Codex Alimentarius Commission, which sets food safety standards for
most nations of the world. Codex officials, meeting March 12-16 in The
Hague, will consider a proposal to completely remove the maximum dose of
radiation to which food can be exposed. The current maximum dose is 10
kiloGray - - the equivalent of 330 million chest x-rays and enough
radiation
to kill a person 2,000 times over.
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- At this week's FDA meeting, Public Citizen told
government
officials and food industry executives that health authorities have used
a variety of excuses to dismiss dozens of studies conducted since the 1950s
that suggest irradiated food may not be safe for human consumption. In
these studies, lab animals have suffered premature death, a rare form of
cancer, fatal internal bleeding, stillbirths and other reproductive
problems,
chromosomal aberrations, liver damage, nutritional deficiencies and low
weight gain. The excuses most commonly given are that the studies are old,
inconclusive or poorly designed.
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- None of these excuses apply to the German study, however,
which was conducted three years ago, yielded conclusive results, and was
performed under the guidance of cutting-edge scientific protocols. Despite
the study's clear findings and high quality, it was distorted and dismissed
by the World Health Organization, which has endorsed the irradiation of
any food at any dose - - no matter how high. And, because it had never
been translated into English, FDA officials never reviewed it.
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- Now, FDA and WHO officials have no excuse. Now they know
that irradiated food holds the true potential to harm people who eat it.
Now they know that if they continue to approve the food industry's requests
to irradiate food - - such as the pending request to irradiate ready-to-eat
foods such as deli meat and pre-cut salads - - they will be defying the
truth. Now they should know better. The question is: Will they?
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