What it means is that the commercial processors can relax their health rules knowing that problems will get zapped later in their supply chain.

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People have to get over their irrational fear of radiation. Not all forms of radiation makes things radioactive; only neutron radiation makes things radioactive. Nobody in their right mind would use neutron bombardment to disinfect food.

If anything, they're using gamma irradiation—akin to giving the food a strong X-ray. This kind of irradiation kills germs, but doesn't do anything damage to the food that doesn't happen when you cook it.

If you insist on raw food, well, good luck.

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I suspect contamination of fresh food wouldn't be nearly the issue if people were more willing to buy local produce from individual farmers.

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I don't think the backlash is necessarily that people are afraid of radiation, but that zapping food does nothing to discourage commercial producers from keeping less-than-clean standards. E. coli are naturally found in animal (including human) colons. The only way for E. coli to possibly get onto produce is through contaminated fecal matter. My bet is that people are more disgusted by feces on their produce (whether or not it contains E. coli) then they are afraid of radiation.

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Good, I'm glad to hear this!

I completely agree with you, Berkana. People need to do a little research before thinking, "oh my gosh, *radiation*" and immediately shunning the process.

It's only going to increase our food safety, at no risk to the consumer.

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Great - waste more taxpayer money on irradiating food grown in the US, despite the fact that a good deal of produce (including the suspect crop of salmonella-carrying jalapenos that recently made headlines) is from overseas. Good work, government bureaucracy!

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Alexi, I admire your spirit, but you have misinterpreted what the story says. There is no taxpayer money being spent on this. The FDA merely has ALLOWED the food producers to irradiate their foods if they choose to do so. This is a (very) partial lifting of an unneeded regulation.

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Sorry, as long as the FDA has the lousy track record it has had on food, drugs, supplements, et al since the 1980's (talk about "do the research...")

I'm not believing a word they say about anything.

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Where does the idea come from that buying locally suddenly creates a "bacteria free" fruit or vegetable in which no one will get sick? I always hear people talking about "if you bought locally this wouldn't happen", but how is this logical? The problem came from either the field, or from contamination from equipment or a worker, not "distance" from the farm to your table.

Does anyone buy organic food? Did that organic food grow up in some cow manure or chicken manure? Cow manure can carry E. coli and chicken manure can carry Salmonella... is organic food "better" for you because of this?

And for those that think that just because this is now allowed that all the farmers will suddenly stop washing their hands or letting animals into the processing area because the "irradiation will take care of it" may need to think again. This process is akin to heat pasteurization, which is a process to help keep the milk supply safe. Just because all milk is pasteurized doesn't mean it is ok for the farmer to scoop manure out with a bucket and then use that bucket to get your milk, which is going to be pasteurized anyways.

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And Monika, the fact that you posted about how people's spinach and lettuce were "missing" radiation only adds to the misinformation that irradiation of fruits and vegetables makes them radioactive. This is simply untrue.

For all those foodies that read this blog and enjoy their spices but don't want irradiated foods, here's something that may be hard to swallow: almost all of your spices are irradiated. Hard fact.

The GAO for the US has some information on irradiation: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/rc00217.pdf
and for those that don't trust the US government, here's a quick publication from the Food and Ag Organization of the United Nations talking about the use of irradiation on foods, which is better than chemical fumigation: http://www.fao.org/english/newsroom/news/2003/20224-en.html

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