THEY NEED MORE INFO --- HEALTH
DECEMBER 15, 1997 VOL. 150 NO. 25
"NUKING" YOUR BURGERS?
IT'LL KILL BACTERIA, SAYS THE FDA. BUT
IRRADIATION MUST OVERCOME THE BEEFS OF
PACKERS AND DOUBTS OF CONSUMERS
BY FREDERIC GOLDEN
For Bill Clinton and other hamburger-loving Americans, nothing could have been
scarier. At the height of the barbecue season last August, more than a dozen people
became seriously ill from ground beef contaminated by a virulent strain of bacteria
known as E. coli 0157:H7, which was traced to a Columbus, Neb., processing plant.
The incident prompted the nation's largest meat recall, a whopping 25 million lbs. of
beef patties. It also brought a vow from gourmand Clinton to wage a major war for
food safety.
Last week the Food and Drug Administration unleashed the war's ultimate
weapon. It approved use of nuclear irradiation to rid beef of the mutant E. coli, as
well as salmonella, listeria and other dangerous pathogens implicated in the millions
of cases of food poisoning in the U.S. that cost some 9,000 lives each year. Dubbed
"cold pasteurization" by the food industry, the controversy-plagued technology
uses powerful gamma rays released by the common medical radioisotope cobalt 60
or streams of high-energy electrons from an accelerator. The bug-zapping power
of the process is undisputed. The ionizing radiation, millions of times stronger than
ordinary X rays, kills molds, bacteria and small insects by wrecking their DNA,
while leaving the exposed food virtually unchanged and radiation free. As a side
benefit, it also eliminates the need for fumigants.
Even so, Americans are unlikely to find irradiated beef in supermarkets or
fast-food emporiums very soon. This is not only because of the public's almost
irrational fear of anything nuclear--or the threats of stepped-up opposition by such
anti-irradiation activists as the Vermont-based group Food & Water. Even major
food companies, while publicly lauding the FDA decision as long overdue, privately
confess they are not all that eager to implement it. Before investing in the costly
shielded radiation rooms that will be needed to sterilize fresh or frozen meat on an
assembly-line basis (and will add 3[cents] or 4[cents] to the retail price of chopped
sirloin), they want to gauge consumer demand. Admits John Masefield, chief
executive of the Whippany, N.J., medical sterilization company Isomedix, whose
three-year-old petition prompted the FDA action: "A lot of people want to be
second."
Or even lower down. Wheat and flour have been cleared for irradiation since 1963,
and over the years spices, pork, fruits and vegetables and poultry have been added
to the FDA list. Yet despite the overwhelming endorsement of many health
authorities, including the American Medical Association and the World Health
Organization--and despite the FDA's renewed assurances last week that
radiation at its recommended dosages affects neither a food's taste nor its
nutritional value in any detectable way--irradiated poultry, vegetables and fruits
are almost as rare as Iranian caviar in U.S. markets. Though NASA has long
irradiated food for space flights, the only widely sold "nuked" consumer products on
U.S. terra firma are baby-bottle nipples, cosmetics, bandages, tampons,
contact-lens cleaning fluids, juice and milk cartons and wine corks.
But food experts sniff a change in the air. The series of recent high-visibility
incidents of E. coli poisoning has heightened public concerns about contaminated
beef--and inspired food producers to experiment with such alternative sterilization
techniques as steam pasteurization of beef carcasses and exposure of food to
ozone, a highly reactive form of oxygen. Yet while these methods are cheaper and
do not require the handling of radioactive material or disposal of nuclear wastes,
they fail a critical test. Aside from cooking, only irradiation is penetrating enough,
say the experts, to come close to meeting new federal guidelines mandating "zero
tolerance" for microbial contamination of ground beef, which, unlike pork or poultry,
is often eaten rare. Still, before irradiated beef can become available, the
Department of Agriculture must issue new regulations for its processing and
labeling, which makes it unlikely, says a departmental official, that you'll find zapped
beef patties in meat coolers before next summer's barbecues. Meanwhile, better
hold that steak tartare.
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