Using Irradiation to Make Food Safer for Consumers
In the world today, there is a limited access to fresh and uncontaminated food. Gunjan Sihna, of Popular Science, reports that "The U. S. Centers of Disease Control estimates 6.5 million confirmed cases and more than 25 million additional unreported incidents of food poisoning each year" (65). For example, with seventy-five percent of the chicken in Europe and sixty percent of the chicken in the United States infected, salmonella is a serious problem ("Food Irradiation"). The United States reports about two million cases of salmonella per year, costing an estimated 2.44 billion dollars. "All creatures carry thousands of different bacteria in their bodies, yet most of these microbes are harmless or even beneficial," says Sinha (65). Unfortunately, there are still many bacteria that cause problems for humans. For example, E. coli is usually found in the gut of cows. Although most people do not eat this part of the cow, the beef may sometimes be cross-contaminated if the intestines are accidentally split during slaughter. Steps are needed to minimize the risk of food contamination on the world's population. Irradiation should be used to kill pathogens and extend the shelf life of food.
Irradiation has been approved worldwide in more than thirty-eight countries. More than thirty commercial irradiation plants are in operation (Murano 3). For example, Odessa, a port on the Black Sea, uses electron gun type irradiation to ionize two-hundred metric tons of fod per hour (Satin 16). Four-million tons of spices and seasonings and seven-million tons of poultry are irradiated in several facilities in France (Murano 4). Even though irradiation is very effective at decontaminating food, there is still room for human error during cooking. The food can still be cross contaminated by unwashed hands and other infected kitchen utensils. Consumers should be careful when handling irradiated foods; the food may be germ-free in the package, but most people's kitchens are not. With all the benefits of irradiation, there is still concern among some. Drexler says "Even the FDA admits that it is impossible to assess the effects of eating irradiated food, because the usual scientific approach, exaggerating normal dosage, won't work: Neither lab animals nor humans can eat normally irradiated food in large quantities, and they risk exposure to actual radioactivity if they eat food exposed to extremely high levels of radiation." (60) More than a dozen of America's poultry processors are against irradiation and will not use it to treat their chickens (Chapman 3). Scientific studies have...established that irradiated food poses no danger whatsoever to human health. Irradiated food is not radioactive food. In fact, given what we're learning about the state of the food-inspection system in the country, irradiated food is almost certainly safer than some of what is now available on supermarket shelves ("Food Irradiation a Promising Technology" 14). Gamma rays (as previously mentioned) are used in one type of irradition plant, the gamma ray type facilities. The most common radioactive substance used in this process is cobalt-60, but cesium-137 is also used. Pellets of the cobalt-60 are stored in stainless steel cylinders called pencils. Each pencil is about 17.75 inches long and one half inch in diameter (Murano 11-12). The pencils are transported to the facility in a lead cast to prevent contamination of people or other things during transfer. The cobalt-60 pencils are held on a source rack. Since most products must be exposed to the gamma rays for several hours, a conveyer moves the food past the source rack, stops, and then moves again. The cobalt-60 emits gamma rays continuously in all directions. A conveyer loops all the way around the sourcerack to take advantage of the gamma rays being emitted in all directions and to maximize efficiency. A standard gamma ray facility contains about one million curies (Murano 11-12). The curie is "a unit of radioactivity equal to 3.7*1010 disintegrations per second" (Webster's "curie"). When new, each pencil contains about six-thousand to thirteen-thousand curies. "Food Irradiation: Solution or Threat." Consumers International. Accessed: 14 September 1999. Irradiation is simply the process of exposing food or some other substance to low levels of radiation. Irradiation does not make food radioactive, and it does not make it glow. In fact, every time one goes outside, one is being irradiated by the sun. If sun lotion was called "radiation protection cream or irradiation lotion," people would be turned off at first (Satin 4). People would eventually realize that there was nothing to fear and would use it.
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2386
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)
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