Health risks
- Food irradiation can result in loss of nutrients, for example vitamin E levels can be reduced by 25% after irradiation and vitamin C by 5-10%. This is compounded by the longer storage times of irradiated foods, and by loss of nutrients during cooking, which can result in the food finally eaten by the consumer to contain little more than ’empty calories’. This is potentially damaging to the long and short-term health of consumers, particularly for sections of society already failing to obtain adequate nutrition.
- When food is exposed to high doses of ionising radiation, the chemical composition and nutritional content of food can change. Radiolytic by-products are often formed in irradiated food. Very few of these chemicals have been adequately studied for toxicity. One such chemical – 2-DCB – can cause DNA damage in rat colon cells at high doses.
- Food irradiation does not inactivate dangerous toxins which have already been produced by bacteria prior to irradiation. In some cases, such as C. botulinum, it is the toxin produced by the bacteria, rather than the bacteria itself, which poses the health hazard.
- Extension of the EU list of foods permitted for irradiation could mean that in future a significant part of the diet of consumers will consist of irradiated foods. The long-term impacts of this to health remain unknown. Far more research is required prior to exposing populations to such a diet.
- Irradiating products such as mechanically recovered chicken meat, offal and egg white, could mislead consumers into thinking these are safer. There is therefore a risk that consumers will fail to take necessary measures to prevent cross-contamination. The risk of recontamination of food after irradiation is very serious as a near sterile food is an ideal medium for very rapid growth of re-introduced bacteria. Irradiated food must therefore be handled with even greater care in homes and restaurants.
- Irradiation can cause mutations in bacteria and viruses leading to potentially resistant strains.
Misleading consumers
- Irradiating fruit and vegetables to extend their shelf life can mislead consumers by making ‘old’ food look ‘fresh’. The greater the age of fruit and vegetables, the lower their nutritional value, not to mention the effects of ageing on their tastes and flavours.
- Consumers may be dangerously misled because irradiation also unavoidably kills off bacteria that produce warning smells indicating that the food is going ‘off’.
- The irradiation of some products, such as dried fruit and flakes or germs of cereal, often considered as health foods (eg. muesli), could lead them to become misperceived by consumers as inherently contaminated food types.
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Misuse of the technology
- Food irradiation can and has been used to mask poor hygiene practices in food production. With irradiation, contamination can be sterilised. This reduces the incentive to clean up sloppy food processing operations – the industry is provided with a ‘quick fix’ as an alternative to dealing with the sources of the problem. The consumer has a right to expect clean food, yet irradiation can lead to the increased production of food contaminated with dirt -‘clean’ dirt.
- Irradiation can be used to maintain or even worsen poor standards of animal husbandry. Overcrowding of animals whist rearing and prior to slaughter, as well as the use of cheap but inappropriate feeds, all contribute to contamination of animal products such as meat, poultry and eggs. Cleaning up these products at the end of the production line removes the incentive to improve animal welfare.
- Breaches of existing labelling legislation have occurred in European countries, with the sale of unlabelled irradiated foods. This was recently discovered to be occurring again by a UK government detection survey which found that nearly half the food supplements sampled were illegally irradiated and unlabelled (see press releases). Under these circumstances the consumers’ right to choice is flouted. Relaxation of irradiation standards could worsen this situation.
- If they succeed, on-going industry efforts in the US to substitute the term ‘irradiation’ on irradiated food labels with terms such as ‘cold pasteurisation’ could serve to confuse and mislead consumers.