T A B L E__T A L K

Fathers who think discuss their struggles and parenting roles in Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Time for one thing
By Kate Moses
Getting sick
(12/16/97)

Confessions of a Lesbian Sperm Donor
By Hank Pellessier
In this case, it takes four
(12/15/97)

Wild Things
By Polly Shulman
Toy stories
(12/12/97)

Spice of Life
By Chitra B. Divakaruni
Relearning life through your kids
(12/11/97)

Drama Queen for a Day
'Tis the season for parenting horror tales
(12/10/97)

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BROWSE THE
MOTHERS ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

NO McNUKES! | PAGE 2 OF 2

It depends on the food. It can be as high as 60 percent, depending on the food and the dose. Radiation-sensitive vitamins are vitamin C, D, E, K and A.

Do you have other concerns apart from irradiation causing carcinogens?

The primary concern is the introduction of new chemicals, some of which are known to be carcinogenic. Another is the depletion of nutrients and vitamins. Another is the environmental implications. If this is truly going to be the solution to a contaminated industrial food supply, we're going to need a nuclear infrastructure in this country of at least 500 to 750 new nuclear facilities.

When the FDA approved this, many scientists were quoted in the press saying this technology is safe. How do you account for that?

Well, the coverage has been unconscionable.

But what might the scientists be basing that view on?

They're no doubt basing it on risk assessment and a backward form of thinking in terms of problem-solving, which is: Grab the latest gimmick rather than trying to look at causes and speak about prevention. The coverage of this issue has been so shallow. You don't hear anything about nuclear accidents that have happened at the food irradiation facilities in this country; or about carcinogenic properties, which are known; or about why we're allowing the causes -- not least of which are the meat monopolies that control the meat industry -- to flourish. Why do five food corporations control 92 percent of the meat industry? That's a problem, particularly when they're vertically integrated -- when they control the factory farms, the filthy slaughtering and processing facilities, the wholesaling -- and they're concerned primarily with profit, not safety.

Don't other nations use irradiation? The World Health Organization has generally approved the procedure, as has the American Medical Association.

It's approved in 40 countries, but it's used very, very sparingly. Just like here, it's been approved since 1986, but very few foods are actually irradiated. In fact, the world's leader for irradiated food, probably responsible for 90 percent of irradiated food, is China. The other major leader is the former Soviet Union. There's kind of a shell-game going on worldwide in which Europe and Asia say the U.S. is eating the stuff up and we're falling behind, and the U.S. says, Asia is using it, and we're falling behind. There's no truth in that. We've done surveys in the major countries that have approval and found they're a lot like the U.S. -- they have approved a lot of uses for it, but they're not using it.

Is that mostly because consumers just don't buy it?

Yes, there's enormous citizen opposition to the idea of exposing food products that we require for health and well-being to nuclear waste products.

Then what did the FDA base its approval on?

At one point in the 1980s, over half of the drugs the FDA had approved were eventually recalled, in some cases because the agency realized that the drugs caused more problems than they cured. The FDA approved breast implants. The FDA and other federal agencies approved DDT in the past. To say that the FDA has approved it doesn't really mean a lot. One, the people at the FDA are human beings, so they're fallible. Two, it's a political agency. The head of the FDA and many of its top deputies are political appointees, not scientists.

I encourage the American people to look at the data that the FDA based its approvals on, and talk to scientists-epidemiologists, toxicologists or cancer researchers who have looked at the data and are beside themselves over the approval, namely the head of the FDA's own food irradiation panel in the 1980s, Dr. Marcia Van Gemert. She's a toxicologist and was the head of the committee that looked at hundreds of FDA studies on irradiated foods in the 1980s. In 1993, she came out with a statement saying that the studies were inadequate to evaluate the toxicity of irradiated foods.

Or talk to Dr. Donald Louria, head of the Department of Preventive Medicine at the New Jersey Medical School in Newark, N.J., who looked at the same FDA studies. In some of the studies, he saw nutritional problems, still births, tumors, methodology that was borderline fraudulent by including nutritional supplements in the diets of animals fed irradiated food, supposedly to offset nutritional inadequacies. There were all kinds of things going wrong that were basically ignored by the FDA. This isn't just Michael Colby saying this. This isn't just any health food advocate. These are scientists who have studied the data that this approval is based on and found it flawed.
SALON | Dec. 17, 1997

Ros Davison is a regular contributor to Salon.