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From: wolit@rabbit.UUCP (Jan Wolitzky)
Newsgroups: net.cooks
Subject: Re: Irradiated Food
Message-ID: <2534@rabbit.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-Feb-84 15:18:57 EST
Article-I.D.: rabbit.2534
Posted: Wed Feb 22 15:18:57 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 23-Feb-84 04:48:29 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 74

While Pat Iurilli (and others) have every reason to be suspicious of
the introduction of new food or drug processes to the marketplace,
let's remember that it was the drug industry that gave us DES, and the
food industry that gave us EDB, and not the "scientific community."
Real scientists don't have an axe to grind;  people who work for
companies that pay them to develop products or "prove" their products 
safe aren't scientists, they're technologists.

That said, let's look at the issue of irradiated food.  (First, I want
to emphasize that this is all armchair quarterbacking:  I'm not an
expert in either health physics or food processing.)  It seems that
there are three possible ways in which irradiating food could hurt you
directly:  

1.  It could make the food itself radioactive.  This depends on the
    type of source used.  With neutrons, sure, atoms in the food could
    fission, creating radioactive products.  With alpha (helium
    nuclei), beta (electrons), or gamma (photons) particles, I don't
    see how this could happen.  Anyway, it would be very easy to
    detect, and thus control, so this isn't much of a problem.

2.  It could transform some benign substance in the food into
    something dangerous.  Again, only by fissioning could this sort of
    alchemy be accomplished.  My guess is that we're talking about
    something completely different from what's being proposed.

3.  It could cause living cells in the food to manufacture toxins.
    This is a more interesting possibility.  Not at all applicable to
    anything not currently living, but it might present a problem for
    the treatment of fresh produce -- anybody know if this is being
    considered?  This problem could arise if radiation levels were
    sufficient to induce genetic changes in the treated material
    (which they certainly must be, to be effective) but insufficient to
    completely destroy the nuclear (in the biological sense) machinery 
    of every last cell.  For instance, would anyone in the food
    industry care to speculate on how many nucleotide substitutions,
    deletions, etc., are needed to cause the DNA in the cells of an 
    edible mushroom to code for the toxins that are normally produced 
    by a closely related, poisonous species?  (My guess would be one or
    two.)  For this reason, I would hope that a distinction be made
    between the use of radiation to treat living and non-living
    products.

Note that above I specified DIRECT dangers.  While not exactly in the
purview of the FDA, the widespread use of high-level radioactive
products by the food industry presents several new risks to society
that should be considered beforehand.  Outside of the nuclear power
and weapons industries, only a tiny amount of radioactive substances
is now used, mainly in the scientific and medical fields.  The food
industry is a giant business, employing many unskilled and semiskilled
workers, and operating under only loose government supervision.  To
introduce large quantities of highly radioactive materials to this
industry may not be possible economically, with the kind of safety 
the public expects.  (For example, explosions in grain storage
elevators have become a big problem lately, exacerbated by the Reagan
administration's elimination of many safety regulations.  Right now, such
explosions endanger only (!) the workers in this industry.  If they
had the potential to scatter radioactive debris over as wide an area
as they now scatter dust, however...)  Also, the addition of many tons 
of radioactive waste products to those now generated by the atomic 
power industry would only aggravate the need to find a quick solution
to THAT problem (and we know the trouble with having to live with quick
fixes, rather than well-thought-out solutions).

In all, this issue is much more of a big can of worms than many
proponents would have us think, though by no means is the evidence 
against it overwhelmingly compelling.  As with Thalidomide in the
early 50s, the public often has reason to be thankful for the FDA's
cautiousness, even when the affected industry is screaming that we're
falling behind other countries in the world because of big, bad
government.  No one's gonna go bust if this new technology is held in
check for a few more years.  Let's think this one out real carefully.

	Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ