Irradiation and Vegetables Don’t Mix!
By: Food And Water Watch (www.foodandwaterwatch.org)
On Aug. 21, 2008 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it will allow fresh spinach and iceberg lettuce to be treated with ionizing radiation. Nearly two years after a major E. coli outbreak was linked to California spinach, which killed three people and sickened more than 200 others in 26 states, it is unbelievable that the FDA’s first action on is this issue is to turn to irradiation rather than focus on how to prevent contamination of these crops. This just illustrates once again how misplaced this agency’s priorities really are. Instead of beefing up its capacity to inspect food facilities or test food for contamination, all the FDA has to offer consumers is an impractical, ineffective and very expensive gimmick like irradiation. read more
By John E. Peck
Hidden deep within the bowels of the recently passed 2002 Farm Bill - unbeknownst to most consumers, farmers, and taxpayers - was Section 1079E, granting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the power to approve any technology capable of killing pathogens as a form of “pasteurization.” Corporate agribusiness has been drooling for years over just such a redefinition in order to circumvent pesky consumer warning labels and sidestep clean-up of filthy factory farm conditions. read more...
