Quotable Quotes:

" When will the public and the lawmakers accept and promote irradiation of fresh meat as the final step in producing safe food free of bacterial contamination? The great public health scientists in Minnesota like Osterholm deserve to be heard, and we have the obligation to listen and act!"

Dr. Robert A. Dietl, Richfield, Minnesota

"The Agriculture Department and beef processors are dithering while children are dying. It's time for ground beef to be routinely irradiated.

Dr. Harry Hull MD, St. Paul, Minnesota

..."The destruction of massive amounts of meat, demands for more government regulation of meat processing and inspections by government agents arenít solutions. Irradiation of the final product with Cobalt 60 is safe, effective and economical. It kills the bacteria and does no harm to the food".

Dr. Ralph C. Whaley MD, Barron, Wisconsin

"Recalls have bankrupted several firms. Outbreaks decrease sales and yield a bitter harvest of lawsuits against producers, distributors, grocers and restaurants. One might think that the food industry would embrace irradiation to solely preserve their financial health. The bigger question, though, is how many more children must end up on kidney dialysis or die before ground beef is routinely irradiated?"

Dr. Harry Hull MD, St. Paul, Minnesota

ìFood irradiation is the most widely studied food safety measure in history, and has been for 30 years.  Itís been approved and recommended by U.S. physicians, the World Health Organization, and virtually every significant group of health professionals across the planet. î

Dennis Avery, Hudson Institute

In This Update:

Our Children Should Not Be Poisoned by Our Food

King of Fruits may sport a royal price tag this year

Irradiation: Technology to Make Beef Safer

Nuke the Critters in Meat

How to Beat E. Coli, Irradiation Will Save Lives

The Way to Make Food Safe

Marler Blog

Food Irradiation Research and Technology text book now available from IFT & Blackwell Publishing

Buying ìorganicî or ìnaturalî or ìlocalî meats wonít protect us from the deadly food-borne bacteria E. coli O157.  The life-threatening bacterium sickens thousands of people every year, and kills hundredsótoo many of them children.

A restaurant owner recently wrote the Minneapolis Star-Tribune claiming that if we raised our cattle on pasture instead of in feedlots, and bought them from local producers, the E. coli problem in red meat would disappear.

ìNot true,î says a University of Minnesota physician. Dr. Michael Osterholm says the restaurant owner ìwould understand this issue in an entirely different light if he had been with me when I had to explain to distraught parents that their young daughterís death was due to eating an undercooked hamburger, prepared by them, and the E. coli that caused her illness came from meat from a cow raised only on pasture grass and processed by the local meat packer.  The cow also came from Grandpaís farm down the road.î

Dr. Osterholm says the life-threatening O157 bacteria are found among all cattle, grass-fed or feedlot.  He points to a recent Minnesota Department of Health study which found that eating red meat from local farms was a significant risk factor for E. coli infection.

ìIn the sterile surgical suites of our ultra-modern hospitals, almost 3 percent of all ëclean surgeriesí still result in a post-surgical site infection.  This means bacterial contamination from the patientís skin or from someone else on the surgical team infected that incision.  If surgeons canít do any better under ideal sterile conditions, how can we expect a meat processing plant to guarantee that the carcass coming off the line doesnít have some hidden microscopic E. coli? . . . we can only hope that the consumer also will take responsibility for never serving undercooked ground beef or any inadequately cooked meat or poultry product.î

The restaurateur quoted a 1998 paper from Cornell University, which studied only three cowsóand never checked any of them for the O157 bacteria!  Too much of our public food policy is being built on such ìsmoke and mirrors,î as some farmers and food marketers try to justify higher price premiums.

ìIn the end,î says Dr. Osterholm, ìthere is only one absolute measure to address this issue: food irradiation. This process, which primarily uses an electron gunójust like the one in your TV, except at higher poweróthat turns electricity into an energy that safely and cost-effectively kills bacteria like E. coli.  It does so without significantly changing the flavor, color or nutrient content of the food.  Routine irradiation of meat and poultry would do for those food commodities what pasteurization did for milk: make them safe.î

Thank you, Dr. Osterholm.

Food irradiation is the most widely studied food safety measure in history, and has been for 30 years.  Itís been approved and recommended by U.S. physicians, the World Health Organization, and virtually every significant group of health professionals across the planet. The Food and Drug Administration has known since 1982 that O157 was a threat to American lives, but it didnít approve irradiation for meat until 1997.  Even now, FDA requires that irradiated foods carry a warning label, and the ìraduraî symbol. So far, both stores and consumers have shied away from the irradiated productsóeven though the irradiation helps keep the products fresher, longer. 

Donít let the people who market those high-priced organic and natural food products pretend they can protect us from deadly bacteria. The longer we support the illusion that we can protect our families by paying more at the checkout counter, the more victims E. coli 0157 will claim.

PUNE, INDIA: Those who savoured juicy Alphonso mangoes this season at cheaper rates will have to shell out more in the next season as the King of Fruits is likely to make a delayed entry. Mango trees in the Konkan belt have just started to blossom, signaling a delayed crop. The first batch of mangoes is expected to arrive in April as against the February-March period, every year. This is likely to also hurt mango growers as exports to large markets such as Japan and the US, which opened last year, may not serve fully, said farmers.

American and Japanese governments had banned the import of Indian mangoes on concerns that diseases through fruit flies, that typically infest the fruit, may spread to those countries. Last year, Japan lifted the ban on mango imports on condition that the fruits will be subject to a vapour heat treatment (VHT).

The US also opened its markets to Indian mangoes with a mandatory irradiation treatment, after special teams from both countries inspected the treatment facilities in Maharashtra. India exports only the Alphonso and Kesar varieties of mangoes. Alphonso mangoes are mainly grown in the Konkan region, especially in Ratnagiri and Sindhudurga districts. According to the Maharashtra State Agricultural Marketing Board (MSAMB), which is also involved in the export of mangoes, around 2.93 lakh tonnes are grown over 346,538 acres of land.

Both districts have been declared as agri-export zones. Devgad village in Sindhudurga district produces one of the worldís biggest alphonso mangoes, about 50,000 tonnes every year. But ironically, the region does not have treatment plants necessary to export to the US and Japan.

The VHT facility is located at Vashi in Navi Mumbai, while the irradiation treatment plant is based at Lasalgaon in Nasik, both of them about 400 to 700 km far from the Alphonso-producing areas. Marathwada leads the production of the Kesar variety, with around 133,635 tonnes of mangoes grown on 85,323 acres of land . Though this region is closer to the irradiation facility, the VHT plant is almost 350 km away.

Despite the lifting of export bans, mango farmers from Konkan are grappling with political and bureaucratic problems which have been slowing their efforts. Their demands for a minimum support price for mangoes used in the processing sector, on the lines of sugarcane, have not been met. ìThough exports to Japan and the US were allowed last year, farmers werenít able to export their produce and we have dim hopes that we will be able to export this year either,î said Sudhir Joshi, president of the Devgad Mango Growersí Association. ìInspite of the fact that our region is an agri-export zone, we do not have VHT and irradiation facilities in our region.

We have been demanding these facilities for a long time. The agriculture marketing board has provided us with cold storage and other packing facilities, but they are not sufficient for exports. We also need a laboratory for testing the quality of soil, fertilisers, pesticides, etc, which is a mandatory requirement for exportsî.

Regarding the Dec. 21 Business article "Beef's Wake-Up Recall":

The Agriculture Department must do more than rethink safety rules for ground beef. The current system is designed to reduce, not eliminate, E. coli and other hazardous bacteria. We're still eating hamburger contaminated with deadly germs, and our children are getting sick and dying.

Improved processing has reduced positive samples to 0.2 percent, but that means that 1 in 500 pounds of raw ground beef contains E. coli. Recalls are not particularly effective. On Dec. 20, the Agriculture Department ordered the recall of meat contaminated with drug-resistant salmonella that had been sold between Sept. 19 and Nov. 5. How much of that remained uneaten?

More thorough cleaning, additional testing and more frequent inspections might conceivably cut contamination in half, at considerable cost. But is 1 in 1,000 -- or even 1 in 5,000 -- an acceptable contamination rate for our children's food? We need a definitive step to kill any harmful bacteria that remain after processing. Safe, effective and inexpensive technology -- irradiation -- is available now. Ground beef from a few forward-thinking processors already is irradiated, as are most spices and an increasing number of tropical fruits.

The Agriculture Department and beef processors are dithering while children are dying. It's time for ground beef to be routinely irradiated.

Nuke the Critters in Meat: Wall Street Journal, Letter to the Editor (December 21, 2007), By Ralph C. Whaley, MD.

How to Beat E. Coli, Irradiation will save lives; (December 3, 2007); Star Tribune, Letter to the Editor; Dr. Harry Hull, MD:

Kudos to Michael Osterholm for forthrightly stating that irradiation is the solution to the problem of E. Coli in ground beef (Opinion Exchange, Nov. 24). Despite major efforts by industry and government regulators to control this deadly bug, the problem persists with new recalls reported almost every week.

Recalls have bankrupted several firms. Outbreaks decrease sales and yield a bitter harvest of lawsuits against producers, distributors, grocers and restaurants. One might think that the food industry would embrace irradiation to solely preserve their financial health.

The bigger question, though, is how many more children must end up on kidney dialysis or die before ground beef is routinely irradiated.

DR. HARRY F. HULL, ST. PAUL; MINNESOTA STATE EPIDEMIOLOGIST, 2000-2006

The Way to Make Food Safe, Star Tribune: Nov. 29, 2007 Letter to the Editor, Dr. Robert A. Dietl, DVM;  Richfield, Minn:

Bravo to Dr. Michael Osterholm for his Nov. 24 counterpoint, "E. coli is simply the enemy; we should treat it as nothing less." When will the public and the lawmakers accept and promote irradiation of fresh meat as the final step in producing safe food free of bacterial contamination? This is not a new concept; we have heard it for 20 years, from food safety experts, public health scientists and doctors of medicine and veterinary medicine. Still we have made little progress, while others try to blame producers and suppliers.

The great public health scientists in Minnesota like Osterholm deserve to be heard, and we have the obligation to listen and act!