Food Fight Over Gamma Rays

By Anastasia Toufexis.

To Michael Fey, it is the "most important advance in dietary health since the invention of pasteurization." To Denis Mosgofian, it is the "massacre of the American food supply." Fey, a food scientist, works for a company called Radiation Technology. Mosgofian is director of the National Coalition to Stop Food Irradiation. The two men are talking -- yelling, really -- about one of the most emotional health issues of the 1980s: the use of irradiation as a preservative. The mixing of gamma rays with edibles has set off a nuclear food-chain reaction, releasing high rhetoric, short tempers and mass uncertainty.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the process for harvested wheat and potatoes more than 20 years ago; dried spices and slaughtered pork were added to the list in the 1980s. Last April the agency gave the go-ahead for irradiating fruits and vegetables, and a furor erupted. Despite the FDA's consent, the process until now has been used mainly to preserve herbs and spices. But last week gamma ray-treated fruit made its first U.S. appearance when Laurenzo's Farmer's Market in North Miami Beach began offering irradiated Puerto Rican mangoes. The FDA is now considering whether to extend approval to fish and poultry. Nineteen other countries have also endorsed irradiation for a wide array of foodstuffs.

The method, which like radiology was developed around the turn of the century, is simple: food passes through a lead-shielded concrete chamber where radioactive cobalt 60 or cesium 137 bombards it with gamma rays, killing insects and bacteria and sometimes slowing ripening. The food does not become radioactive. "There's nothing in common at all between a nuclear reactor like Chernobyl and an irradiator," says Karl Abraham, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). "It's like comparing bananas to tigers." Treated food "can be immediately eaten," says George Giddings, director of food irradiation at Isomedix.

Supporters claim that gamma-ray exposure offers an alternative to controversial pesticides, fumigants and preservatives, and protects human health by killing parasites like trichina worms in pork and bacteria like salmonella, which causes food poisoning. Irradiation, they note, can extend shelf life. "We see the day when you can go into a supermarket and buy a barbecued chicken that has been cooked, vacuum-packed and irradiated. It can sit on the shelf for eight years, and all you'll have to do is heat it up," predicts Physicist Martin Welt, founder of Radiation Technology.

Critics bombard irradiation with objections. It can be expensive, adding as much as 5 cents a lb. to the price of some fresh produce. Since it can be used only on harvested crops, pesticides will still be needed in the fields. Moreover, say opponents, the low level of radioactivity set by the FDA for produce (100 kilorads) is not strong enough to slow the ripening of most fruits and vegetables. Plant Biologist Noel Sommer of the University of California at Davis has concluded that 200 kilorads is needed to retard the growth of gray mold on picked strawberries, and at that level the berries turn squishy. Other claimed advantages may have drawbacks. Irradiation "can kill the organisms that produce the signals and odors that warn people they are eating spoiled food," cautions Leonard Solon, director of New York City's Bureau for Radiation Control. "But it may not be able to kill the bacteria that cause food poisoning."

Still more debate centers around safety concerns. Adversaries contend that the treatment changes the chemical composition of food and can create carcinogens, such as benzene, formaldehyde and substances called unique radiolytic products (URPs). Those who favor the process respond that the quantities of toxic chemicals are minute, that they occur naturally (like benzene in eggs), and that some cooking methods -- frying, for example -- also generate small amounts of carcinogens. As for the URPs, they are not new creations at all, says the FDA, but simply existing chemicals that have not been detected before in the human diet. "There's no food that is completely known," points out FDA Biochemist Clyde Takeguchi. "You can't identify everything that's in an apple. The basis for establishing safety is not absolute safety. It's reasonable safety."

Security is at the heart of another charge. Noting that the Department of Energy plans to help build demonstration food-irradiation plants in Oklahoma, Iowa, Hawaii, Florida, California and Washington, opponents complain that the resulting spread of radioactive material will increase the chances of mishaps during transport, use and disposal. Nor has the supervision of existing irradiation plants been reassuring. The NRC acknowledges that it may inspect a facility only once in three years. Radiation Technology's license to operate a New Jersey plant was recently suspended for two months after the NRC found that company officials tried to hide a safety violation. Next month International Nutronics goes on trial for, among other things, flushing radioactive water into the sewage system of Dover, N.J.

The controversy seems headed for a congressional showdown. California Democrat Douglas Bosco is pushing a House bill, with 39 co-sponsors, to void the FDA's approval of irradiation for pork, fruits and vegetables. The industry's supporters, however, are convinced that they will prevail. Says Physicist Welt: "It took 50 years for canned food to be accepted by your grandmother. It took frozen food 20 years to be accepted by your mother. It will take the housewives of today five years to accept irradiated food."

With reporting by Janice M. Horowitz/New York and Dick Thompson/Washington