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Irradiation Could Reduce Food-Borne Illness

November 9, 2006

Food Safety • CDC Gives "All Clear" On Salmonella Outbreak • One Death Reported in Oklahoma E. coli Outbreak • Feds Approve Irradiation of Spinach, Lettuce • FDA Issues Warning About Frozen Seafood • Whole Foods Extends Beef Recall • Whole Foods Recalls Fresh Ground Beef • Six New E. coli Cases Reported In Massachusetts • FDA Says It Found Salmonella Source In Mexico • U.S. Peppers Get Clean Bill Of Health • Jalapeño Peppers from Mexico Recalled • Tomatoes Get the All-Clear From FDA • Salmonella Toll Quietly Climbs • USDA to List Retailers in Meat Recalls • Emergency Regs Needed for Tracking Produce, Food Groups Say • Nebraska Beef Recall Expanded to 5.3 Million Pounds • Consumer Group Presses Feds to Fix Food System • Kroger Expands Ground Beef Recall • Salmonella Outbreak is Biggest Ever Tied to Produce • E. coli Outbreak May Be Linked To Kroger Ground Beef • Salmonella: Trickier Than Imagined • Congressional Report Faults FDA Inaction • Tomatoes Off the Menu as Feds Search for Source • FDA 'Inaction' Blamed for Salmonella Outbreak • Restaurants Shun Tomatoes In Wake Of Salmonella Outbreak • FDA Warns Of Tomato-Linked Salmonella • USDA Bans Downer Cow Slaughter • CDC Links 2006 Salmonella Outbreak to Dog Food --- • More ...

Hamburgers, apple cider, petting zoos and even spinach have been blamed for E. coli outbreaks in recent years. It doesn't have to be that way, says Dennis G. Maki, M.D., writing in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Irradiation of high-risk foods after processing could greatly reduce the incidence of all bacterial foodborne disease and save hundreds of lives each year, Maki argues.

"Irradiation kills or markedly reduces counts of food pathogens without impairing the nutritional value of the food or making it toxic, carcinogenic, or radioactive," according to Maki, a professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin.

In the latest major E. coli outbreak, 199 persons in 26 states were sickened by fresh spinach or spinach-containing products from commercial brands processed by Natural Selection Foods of San Juan Bautista, California. At least 103 of them developed acute renal failure and three died.

It was, said Maki, at least the 26th reported outbreak of E. coli infection traced to contaminated leafy green vegetables since 1993.

But the problem of food-borne illness extends beyond the widely publicized mass outbreaks. Magi said that during each day of the spinach E. coli outbreak, "there were at least 5 to 10 times as many cases of endemic Shiga toxin–producing E. coli infection throughout the country as there were outbreak cases."

Agencies charged with food safety -- the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) -- have ratcheted up their surveillance efforts. But after some initial success, the rate of decline in food-borne illness has leveled off over the last decade, according to Maki.

The use of industrial farming techniques make it much harder to ensure the safety of meat and produce, Maki said.

"During my childhood in 1950s rural Wisconsin, when I ate a hamburger at home, the ground beef had been produced locally from cuts taken from several sides of beef purchased by the neighborhood grocer from a local farmer, who probably raised no more than 25 pasture-fed cows on a 150-acre farm," he recalled.

"Today, virtually all beef consumed in North America is produced on a vast industrial scale, starting with a herd of tens of thousands of grain-fed cattle, raised in the final months before slaughter in the constrained environment of a feedlot, with the beef cuts from hundreds of cows to several thousand contributing to a single lot of more than 100,000 pounds of ground beef, shipped to many hundreds of supermarkets in multiple states."

There has been a decline in E. coli contamination of ground beef but produce is another matter.

"Although most reported infections with Shiga toxin–producing E. coli are linked to undercooked ground beef, nearly 25% of outbreaks stem from contamination of commercial produce that is eaten uncooked — lettuce, spinach, cabbage, sprouts, or tomatoes," Maki said.

Irradiation Already Approved

Irradiation of food is already approved in the United States for most perishable foods and has been endorsed by the World Health Organization, CDC, FDA, USDA, American Medical Association, and European Commission Scientific Committee on Food.

But, says Maki, intense opposition from antinuclear activitists has blocked widespread use of the technology.

"A number of food products are already commonly irradiated, with no evidence of harmful effects, and for decades, we have sterilized hundreds of millions of implanted medical devices through irradiation each year," Maki said.

The CDC has estimated that irradiation of high-risk foods could prevent up to a million cases of bacterial foodborne disease that result in the hospitalization of more than 50,000 persons and kill many hundreds each year in North America.

"I believe it is time to overcome our irrational fears and act to ensure the safety of our food," Maki concluded.

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