Keeping fresh foods safer
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
The Food and Drug Administration has announced it will approve the use of irradiation on fresh lettuce and spinach to try to cut down on the risk of contamination from e-coli and salmonella.
It’s a welcome decision, but only because the technique has been proven reliable. The FDA is finally getting around to the same determination already made by such groups as the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association that irradiation is a safe, effective and affordable method of sanitizing fresh produce without affecting its quality.
Of course, some people remain concerned that irradiated produce will make them glow in the dark, but that just isn’t true. Test after test has shown irradiation to be of scant risk.
As events over the past few years have proven, simply washing vegetables before they are fresh packed isn’t always enough to insure they are bacteria free. Yet, consumers expect when they open bags of chopped lettuce or baby spinach that those products will be ready to eat.
Most of the time, the products are safe, but being in a hurry and perhaps lazy, consumers often do not conduct their own washing of the contents of those bags o’ veggies or fruit, and the result can be anything from a tummy ache, to a hospital stay, and even in some instances, to death.
When fresh produce is imported from other countries, it becomes even more important to have a tool such as irradiation available. We have no way of knowing what the sanitation conditions were in the fields from which the products were harvested.
The ultimate test will be whether consumers will accept irradiated food. Regulators and the industry are betting that they will.
