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Irradiating Meat Reduces Bacteria Count to Near Zero An informed consumer is also a safe consumer, according to a Kansas State University agricultural economist. With many people concerned about the recent cases of Mad Cow disease and the safety of meat products, the research of John A. (Sean) Fox, is not only extremely important to meat producers but also important to consumers as well. “What consumers know about irradiation and the safety of the final product determines what price they will pay for irradiated meats,” said Fox. “Consumers are usually willing to spend an extra 15-20 cents per pound for ground beef that has undergone the irradiation process,” he said. Education about the irradiation process is what Fox considers the top priority if there is to be a proliferation of these products. “There has to be more of a concerted effort to educate people. I would say we should be doing more. The USDA should do more.” A meat product can be irradiated in two ways. The first involves an electron beam shooting electrons onto the product, thus, killing bacteria. The other procedure consists of exposing the meat product to radioactive cobalt. Fox says both procedures are equally safe, and reduce the bacterial count by 99 percent on a product. Opponents of irradiated foods worry that radiation received by the meats will have harmful side effects for consumers. Fox says the fears are completely unjustified. “There is no evidence to suggest that [harmful side effects]. There is absolutely no way the product becomes radioactive. Some vitamins are lost in the process, but those are pretty much insignificant,” he said. Many health-monitoring groups support irradiation – including the American Medical Association, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization. While the irradiation process allows the consumer to prepare meat by cooking it less, the USDA suggests handling and preparing irradiated meats in the same way as one would handle non-irradiated meats. Currently, food treated with the technology must carry labels saying either “treated with irradiation” or “treated by radiation.” Irradiated foods must display a special symbol, known as the radura, which consists of green petals in a broken circle. Fox supports labeling requirements, and fears that less specific labeling procedures -- such as substituting “electronically pasteurized” for the words “treated by radiation” -- would fuel the fire of opponents’ arguments. “They could say that such wording is a cover-up; that one is trying to say that this has been electronically pasteurized when it’s been irradiated. I think educating the consumers is the way of doing this.”
Story prepared by Matt Schlobohm
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