What we are experiencing with tainted food lately in the news is a classic case of media and industry working together to manufacture consent. What we are about to experience is the Pearl Harbour of food irradiation. Let us bring the weak and vulnerable into the war create a problem, and then sell the solution, one that is marred with controversy and profits.

In recent months and days we have had, many-tainted food recalls no need to be a nuclear physicist to know it was just a matter of time to see what was behind it all irradiation of food, all food not just fresh produce. Industry wanted to promote the use of the previously opposed food irradiation, the process that has some very dire health consequences that makes listeriosis and salmonella look benign.

The problem, how we could get the masses to consent to and then actually demand this type of food adulteration the solution, the media they would start a year long tainted food blitz. Literally, they would scare every person who eats food in this country. Products like tainted tomatoes, lettuce, meat, strawberries, spinach, cantaloupes and fast food just to name a few. A few well placed headlines of children and elderly grandmothers’ becoming sick coupled with some deaths and so begins the perfect campaign for the food irradiation program.

Do not get me wrong, I am deeply sorry for the loss or illness of anyone’s family member due to tainted and poisoned food however let us look at some facts and remember, this is a psychological war, us against the bad pathogens and those innocent people were mere casualties of war that is about to become more brutal.

There has been for many years, opposition to the food irradiation process, this is for a very good reason, in fact, the irradiation process can cause more serious problems than any germs they could potentially eradicate.
According to George L. Fritsch, Ph.D, Cancer Research Scientist at Roswell Park Memorial Institute for the New York State Department of Health, he states "Irradiation works by splitting chemical bonds in molecules with high-energy beams to form ions and free radicals. When sufficient critical bonds are split in organisms contaminating a food, the organism is killed. Comparable bonds are split in the food. Ions are stable free radicals contain an unpaired electron and are inherently unstable and therefore reactive. How long free radicals remain in food treated with a given dose of radiation or the reaction products formed in a given food cannot be calculated but must be tested experimentally for each food. Different doses of radiation will produce different amounts and kinds of products."

The conclusion is this process has the potential to alter your DNA.
As recent as last week the FDA in the U.S. had announced, “In the ongoing fight against the food borne illnesses that have been plaguing our country, effective today, spinach and iceberg lettuce can be irradiated to kill certain such bacteria, including E. coli and Salmonella”.

This follows a wave of Salmonella and E. coli outbreaks, such as the massive 2006 E. coli outbreak in fresh spinach. The FDA has long allowed fruits and vegetables to be irradiated at lower levels targeting insects and mold the new level will destroy pathogenic bacteria in or on spinach and will without a doubt destroy all the vitamin A and folic acid content not to mention the serious health consequences of eating such foods.

In December 2000 a Canadian food irradiation services company, Fresh'n'Safe Ltd., has received notification from Health Canada that a review of its petition requesting approval of irradiation of poultry has been completed. All that is left to do is the extensive fear-mongering marketing, bringing to light every single food related illness they can find with the help of the media.

Many public health and government officials and trade associations have begun campaigning to promote the increased use of irradiation on our food. The higher costs and a perception that consumers do not want to buy irradiated foods have made manufacturers slow to adopt irradiation so, the marketing begins-beware.