Radura is the new symbol that will soon appear in your
food stores on those newly approved irradiated meats. This "ecofriendly
looking" label will appear on meats that have been exposed to ionizing
radiation, with enough energy to knock electrons off the atoms in your
food. Ohh boy, glad I don't eat the stuff !
This radiation kills the bacteria from the fecal matter
introduced onto the meat during the slaughter and processing of meat in
our current processing plants. The USDA euphemistically calls it
"adulterated under unsanitary conditions."
When foods are irradiated with gamma rays from
cobalt-60, cesium-137 or high energy electrons from an electron beam
irradiator, the processors do not have to improve the sanitary
conditions in their facilities that contaminated the meat with fecal
matter in the first place. The added benefit is that feed lot operators
can continue feeding the unnatural diets with antibiotics which produces
low level diarrhea in the animals and the acidic environment that allows
these bacteria to exist and mutate.
But On The Bright Side
Unlike the recombinant DNA technology, rBGH -- the
"Quicker Picker Upper" for milk cows which has been banned in Canada,
our government in its beneficence has decided to let us, the consumer,
choose whether you want to eat irradiated food - But Only For Foods You
Cook Yourself ! Restaurants and fast food stores do not have to tell you
if the food you eat there has been irradiated or not according to the
new regulations effective December 15th, 1999.
How Much Radiation Will My Meat Receive?
By using units of radiation, the kGy, unfamiliar to most
lay people, the USDA press release at:
http://www.usda.gov/news/releases/1999/12/0486BG.htm tries to
conceal how much radiation your food will actually receive. Let's use a
new unit called Chest X-ray. According to the USDA article, a Chest
X-ray is 40 milliRems of radiation or 0.00000040 kGy (kiloGray). You
receive half or 20 millirems (.00000020 kGy) during a dental x-ray. On
average during the year, a person receives approximately 5 millirems
(.00000005 kGy) from televisions and wristwatches. These figures are
much lower than those that have been determined safe and effective for
use in food production.
As the article states, "These figures are much lower
than those that have been determined safe and effective for use in
food." So they have to hit your food with much higher doses to kill the
bugs. In fact, the approved doses of radiation are from 3.0 kGy for
poultry to 7.0 kGy for frozen meats.
Translation, to kill the fecal contamination bugs in
your meat, the meat packers must expose your food to some 7 1/2 million
to 17 1/2 million Chest X-ray's worth of radiation! For your frozen
meat, that is the radiation equivalent to taking a chest X-ray ever hour
of every day for the next 1997.72 years. No wonder the DNA and cell
structure of the bugs are shredded to the extent they cannot live. But
remember, that same amount of radiation is also shredding the DNA,
vitamins and cell structure of the food you eat as well. Think of it as
If you want to learn more about this issue from a
non-industry source see the links at
http://www.purefood.org/irradlink.html Food Irradiation depletes
vitamins and creates hazardous by-products
Drum In The New Century and Millennium!
Go on to
LCA/CAFT California Tour
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