Pacific Spirit Marine Institute

Starting Friday, U.S. lettuce and spinach go nuclear.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

The FDA has decided to allow food producers to radiate lettuce and spinach.
Put on your tinfoil hats when you try to figure this one out.
Irradiated meat has been around for years. In February 2000, the U.S.government began allowing food manufactures to irradiate raw meat and meat products. At that time it was doubtful the public would accept meat that had been zapped. Working toward a decade later I'd be hard pressed to find a shopper that knows their meat has been irradiated.

Huh?

If you happen to pick up a package at your local grocery right now, and you see the words, 'cold pasteurized' or 'electronically pasteurized you are holding an irradiated product.

If you are under the age of 40, and you happen to carry a magnifying lens with you, you may just be able to read the fine print. If you're over 40 odds are you wouldn't be able to see it even with a magnifying glass.

In 2007 Consumer Reports found that 71% of consumers didn't want to buy irradiated products.

Don't worry though, the food that's been irradiated hasn't gone radioactive. You won't turn yellow and start glowing, but don't take off your tinfoil hat just yet.

It seems the maximum dose of irradiation on meat is 4.5 kiloGrays. A kiloGray is one unit of irradiation. 4.5 doesn't seem so bad. Not bad until we find out that is the equivalent of about 7 million chestX-rays. That Million with an 'M'.

Once we approach the 5 or 6 million chest X-ray mark, what's another 500,000 plus or minus?
Although our meat isn't glowing, irradiating items with fat in them causes a peculiar 'radiolytic byproduct' specific to irradiation. It changes the fat into 2-ACBs. [2-alkylcyclobutanones] 2-ABCs when put into rats cause tumors to grow in their colons.

There has been a tremendous increase in the U.S. in colon cancers since 1999. We would be led to believe that is due to more people being diagnosed with the disease. Maybe, but what are the odds?

Meanwhile...

How about cleaning up our act? Can we not figure out how to keep fecal matter, animal and human, out of our food supply? Can we really not figure that out?

Really?