posted on July 19, 2002 09:23:27 AM new
18 million pounds of hamburger meat has been recalled in 21 states by Conagra for possible E.Coli contamination. I guess the good old mystery meat found in hot dogs is still the choice of discerning gourmets.
[ edited by stusi on Jul 19, 2002 09:29 AM ]
posted on July 19, 2002 11:35:30 AM new
Morningstar Farms Black Bean Burgers are my favorites. You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on July 19, 2002 11:38:13 AM new
Brush a little jerk sauce or your favorite on them and throw those meat free pups on the grill. You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on July 19, 2002 04:46:34 PM new
My brother is a food scientist and he has worked as Quality Control for many years for various name brands that you'd recognize. He's always been one to try to pour the company's profits into contaimination prevention and has sometimes had very little success. Many times, these big company's owners and mangerment could hardly care less how contaiminated processed food gets - just try tracing it back to the source!
I have never seen any article on using irradiation to prevent bacterial containation that said that the food tasted any different after the raw food was irradiated, or cooked any differently, or was radioactive afterwards. So, I don't see any objection to using it.
The FDA Again Ignores Its Own Warnings,
Legalizes Radiation 'Treatment' of Fruit, Vegetable Juice
Public Citizen Challenges the Government's Latest Irradiation Decision
WASHINGTON, D.C.
"The FDA legalized the irradiation of fruit and vegetable juice despite
warnings from agency scientists that radiation destroys nutrients. With
orange juice, irradiation destroys 48 percent of the beta carotene, 13
percent of the vitamin C and 10 percent of the vitamin A, according to
information submitted to the FDA by California Day-Fresh Foods, which
applied for the irradiation permit"
"Similarly, in a July ruling approving the irradiation of eggs, FDA officials
did not mention that irradiation destroys about 80 percent of the vitamin A
in eggs, a fact determined by FDA scientists. And in an October ruling, FDA
officials stated incorrectly that the agency had analyzed the new chemicals
formed when alfalfa and other sprouting seeds are irradiated. In fact,
internal agency memos reveal that no such analysis was ever conducted."
=============
Public Citizen has some interesting information:
A Broken Record How the FDA Legalized - and Continues to Legalize - Food Irradiation Without Testing it for Safety
A special report by Public Citizen's
Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program
The Cancer Prevention Coalition and
Global Resource Action Center for the Environment
posted on July 19, 2002 08:45:56 PM new
Thanks, aposter. That was a very good, straightforward article. It explained what I did not understand, and that was how radiation simply passing through a food product might cause it to be bad. Not that the article claimed that the food ever became radioactive or that sort of nonsense, but that new chemical compounds are formed inside the irradiated food, some of which are known cancer-causing, and others that have not been tested yet. Plus, vitamins and nutrients suffer a WOMD when irradiated, so what's the point in eating the food?
Also, if oyu recall that Bush wants irradiation for all food products. Can you find an article that shows whether or not he's read any evidence to support his support of corporate use of irradiation?
posted on July 20, 2002 06:10:12 AM new"Can you find an article that shows whether or not he's read any evidence to support his support of corporate use of irradiation?"
Unfortunately, after researching other types of food I don't think Bush has to have evidence. They just take questionable research, spin it and feed it to the press.
I googlized the search "george w. busch + safety irradiated foods" and can up with some items. But, it looks like there could be more
on George Sr.
===================
This site has a time-line for low dose radiation. Food is included and
says the first irradiated food was:
"On September 11 [1986], irradiated mangoes were made available in a farmer's market in Miami, Florida marking the first time irradiated food was offered for sale in the United States. Concurrently with this event came the first citizen's protest of the sale of irradiated food."
Death Warmed Over: The Onslaught of Irradiated Products
Gary Alexander.
Hudson Valley Chromogram
<snip>
"On November 15, 2000, Public Citizen reported the next step in the irradiation plan directly from the source, Geneva, Switzerland, headquarters of the World Trade Organization and World Health Organization among other elites: “During a three-day meeting at the World Health Organization in Geneva that was closed to the public, the International Consultative Group on Food Irradiation (ICGFI) decided earlier this month that the maximum radiation dose for food could be eliminated without posing additional hazards to people. The current international radiation limit is 10 kiloGray—the equivalent of 330 million chest X-rays, or 2,000 times the fatal radiation dose for humans. The ICGFI reasoned that some food has to be irradiated at high levels to kill certain microorganisms, but it ignored evidence that food irradiated at high doses is nutritionally deficient and may be harmful when eaten.”
"At the meeting were representatives of the major industry trade groups and irradiation companies, “including Titan of San Diego, Isomedix/STERIS of New Jersey, the Grocery Manufacturers of America, and the Association of International Industrial Irradiation. In fact, some of the corporate executives are government-appointed delegates to the ICGFI.”
posted on July 20, 2002 06:29:10 AM new
Just mark the stuff as to how it was processed and let me decide if I want to buy it.
It changes the nutrients when you mill or cook food also. It adds carcinogins to grill it or smoke it.
The people saying you can't use it at all even if you tell us, and keeping it off the market are the frightened ignorant people who think it glows in the dark and ruins your camera film.
Nobody will know what effect it has until you have millions of people eat it for decades.
I know what effect eating a E. Coli burger has. I can weight the risk thanks.
I would never switch over 100% to irradiated - but I would sure use it to expand what I keep in the cupboard for emergencies, and for traveling and camping.
posted on July 20, 2002 07:08:20 AM new
Walmart just issued a major recall of Red Devil barbecue grills. If the grill doesn't get you, the meat will! BTW- IMHO not thoroughly cooking meat causes many more illnesses than irradiation ever will.
posted on July 20, 2002 12:32:12 PM new
One of the news programs (and it might not have been from the U.S.) spoke of using ozone to kill bacteria in food. They said what was used did not destroy the environment or ozone layer and was safer than irradiating foodstuffs. This was a year or so ago, but I remember they also said the reason it wasn't being considered was that there were already very expensive irradiation facilities in place in the U.S!
Gravid, you said "I would never switch over 100% to irradiated - but I would sure use it to expand what I keep in the cupboard for emergencies, and for traveling and camping."
Not to worry!! There are other methods you can use or buy. It is called canning, freeze drying, solar drying and pickling! We backpacked with freeze dried food. It is quite tasty when you don't have anything else. Guess the guys hyping the convenience of it all forgot about those.
Irradiation is only being used to cover the food industries' butts! They are opting
for that instead of keeping decent facilities. Heck, it must be hard to keep cattle & chicken fresh and tasty when you are cramming them into pens where they can't move and fight & defecate on each other!
They are adding other ways of helping the world's food supply of course, like
gene altered beakless chickens and the newest one chickens without feathers. At least they will be able to see any skin lesions or cancers without the feathers! But, will they just zap them and send them on their merry way to your kid's dinner plate?
I will stick with the PUBLIC CITIZEN & Nader and other sceptics every time. I will stick with alternative health care people who are warning about the dangers of irradiation, transgenic frankenfoods, cell phones, almost untested drugs and industrial sludge on factory farms anytime.
And I have been rewarded many times over! Twenty years ago I listened and read alternative researchers warning about estrogen replacement and convinced my Mom not to use it. A few years ago I heard Dr. Susan Love (I believe it was) say that it hadn't been tested well enough. They had used males for testing as they do for most research. I sent for the taped shows from NPR and sent them to my relatives.
I decided not to use it myself too. Mom and I have some wrinkles now and we don't look 30 any more.
Her best friend and my mother-in-law both opted for hormone replacement for some 20 years. They have great skin at 70 years old. Unfortunately they both lost some of it due to breast cancer that hadn't shown up in their families before.
Give me an independent thinking research and health community any time! (Ok, so a little off the irradiated topic here!)
posted on July 20, 2002 01:11:03 PM new
aposter,I completely agree with your
statement and assesment of hormon replacement. None of my family on either side
got into the man made hormones and there is no cancer anywhere! Our friends and their
Mothers did'nt fair so well and they are all gone now.
Makes you wonder what else the tests would have shown,(hormone study)had they not shut it down 2 years early because of the information they already had , scared the researchers so bad.
Sorry about the off subject as well.
