WSJ: E. coli Could Be Would Be Stopped by Irradiation

The very special WSJ editorials are the ones carrying important info that somehow isn’t news that so obviously should be that you wonder how a bunch of people in Manhattan can point out so many obvious things that an entire nation’s press corps has totally missed.

Monday’s subscription-only editorial on the E. coli situation, which ought to get to the free side at OpinionJournal.com, and quickly, is one of those. Since it’s not there, most of it is excerpted here (bolds are mine):

The recent E. coli outbreaks are playing as a familiar morality tale of too little regulation. The real story is a much bigger scandal: How special interests have blocked approval of a technology that could sanitize fruits and vegetables and reduce food poisoning in America.

The technology is known as food “irradiation,” a process that propels gamma rays into meat, poultry and produce in order to kill most insects and bacteria. It is similar to milk pasteurization, and it’s a shame some food marketer didn’t call it that from the beginning because its safety and health benefits are well established. The American Medical Association, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration and the World Health Organization have all certified that a big reduction in disease could result from irradiating foods.

Says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Minnesota: “If even 50% of meat and poultry consumed in the United States were irradiated, the potential impact on foodborne disease would be a reduction in 900,000 cases, and 350 deaths.” A 2005 CDC assessment agrees: “Food irradiation is a logical next step to reducing the burden of food borne diseases in the United States.”

We asked several leading health scientists whether food irradiation could have prevented the E. coli outbreak at Taco Bell restaurants. “Almost certainly, yes,” says Dennis Olson, who runs a research programs on food irradiation at Iowa State University. A recent study by the USDA’s Agriculture Research Service confirms that “most of the fresh-cut (minimally processed) fruits and vegetables can tolerate a radiation of 1.0 kGy, a dose that potentially inactivates 99.999% of E. coli.”

So what’s stopping irradiation? The answer is a combination of political pressure, media scare tactics and bureaucratic and industry timidity.

….. None of these mythologies has ever been substantiated by science. The Centers for Disease Control concluded its investigation by noting: “An overwhelming body of scientific evidence demonstrates that irradiation does not harm the nutritional value of food, nor does it make the food unsafe to eat.” According to Paisan Loaharanu, a former director at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “The safety of irradiated foods is well established through many toxicological studies. . . . No other food technology has gone through more safety tests than food irradiation.”

….. The FDA does allow irradiation for meat, but it requires warning labels that send a message to consumers that eating such beef or chicken is risky. Elizabeth Whelan of the American Council on Science and Health points out that the FDA would be wiser to require that meats and produce that aren’t irradiated have a safety warning label. Those are the potentially unsafe foods.

Somehow this side of the story never seems to make it into the mainstream media. Instead, the press replays the familiar yarn that the E. coli outbreaks are caused by budget cuts and government collusion with industry. In fact, FDA spending on food safety has increased to $535 million in 2006 from $354 million in 2001, a 51% increase. ….. In any case, such inspections and more regulations can never hope to prevent E. coli as well as irradiation does.

….. Today only about 1% of our meat and produce is irradiated, though the technology was invented here. Such nations as India, Mexico and Thailand are starting to irradiate most of the food they export to the U.S., which means that produce from abroad could be safer than that grown here. The real scandal of these E. coli outbreaks is that public safety has taken a back seat to political correctness and bureaucratic delay at the FDA.

Why aren’t those who prevent life-saving technology from coming online over groundless fears ever get challenged about THEIR role when people get sick and die?

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UPDATE, Dec. 20: The Toledo Blade proves the Journal’s point, obsessing over inspections and “more government direction” while failing to even mention the improvements possible with irradiation.