From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr)
Subject: Re: [sci.med] Vitamins and the FDA : Food Degredation
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 03:10:18 GMT

In article <1992Oct3.050647.9526@eskimo.celestial.com> delisle@eskimo.celestial.com (Ben Delisle) writes:
}[Forwarded]
}From: starkid@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Lance Sanders)
}Newsgroups: sci.med,misc.fitness,misc.consumers
}Subject: Vitamins and the FDA (Pt. 3 of 3): Food Degredation

(About food irradiation)

}   Gamma ray bombardment breaks up some of the food molecules during the 
}process, creating radiolytic by-products such as benzene, a known 
}carcinogen. The FDA's stance is that the amounts of toxins formed are too 
}small to be significant. However, since any dose of the chemicals can cause 
}cellular changes that can develop into cancer, the level doesn't eliminate 
}the risk.

Here we find the classic apocalyptic presumption: risk would be absent were
it not for all these man-made "unnatural" things.

The real point here is to determine the comparative risk.  Specifically, is
the risk posed by the carcinogens produced by irradiating food greater than
the anti-carcinogenic effect on the public from eating more fruits and
vegetables, which they will if irradiation has any economic justification
at all, i.e., if it's cost-cutting to use this technique.

As for whether or not this has been proven, it can't be until the market,
our only known means of discovering such things, has a chance to act.  It's
ironic that Bruce Ames is cited in support of part of your argument, when
this is precisely the sort of point he goes to great pains to make.

Back when California had "Big Green" on the ballot (1990, as I recall), he
argued that the regulations would increase the cost of fruits and vegetables,
consumption of which is anti-carcinogenic, and would thereby increase the
risk of contracting cancer for those at the margin, the poor.

If food irradiation is left to the free market, it will have a chance to
reduce the price of vegetables, thus decreasing the risk of cancer for
those who would thereby consume more - an effect that would be greatest at
the margin.  In other words, this would have a disparate benefit upon the
poor.

Unless food irradiation can be conclusively proven to pose a risk that
outweighs this benefit, it must be permitted.

}   Margaret A. Peckham, program associate, Public Interest Research Group, 
}New York:

A point of information: The PIRGS, such as this NYPIRG, are Naderite.  Their
parent organization is the Occupational Safety Hazards Administration, OSHA,
the creature of Ralph Nader, noted for giving higher priority to regulatory
goals than to scientific truth or the benefits to be obtained from free
markets, as are his associates.  CalPIRG wrote the toxics portion of the
defeated "Big Green" initiative I mentioned above.

}   Dr. Rebecca Goldberg, of the Environmental Defense Fund:
}
}   "The FDA policy is virtually ababndoning regulation of new and untested 
}foods. Genetic engineers are taking genes from bacteria, viruses and 
}insects and adding them to fruits, vegetables and grains. They are 
}producing foods that have never before been eaten by human beings. Without 
}clear and consistent labeling of genetically engineered foods, consumers 
}will have no idea of what they are buying."

Synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone is chemically identical to that which occurs
without the artifice of man.  Besides, the point is that they should be
tested just like other foods, for what risks they pose to consumers.  There's
no justification for more stringent standards other than ulterior motives to
prohibit, de facto, biotechnology, as Jeremy Rifkin at least admits he wants
to do.  Industry has the right to produce things which will make our lives
better.

}   Jean Halloran, Consumer Policy Institute arm of Consumers Union:
}
}   "Consumers who are risk-averse should have the opportunity to buy the 
}plain old (food) if they want."

They will.  The company that's marketing the tomatoes will label them as
genetically enhanced - all without government regulation, albeit with the
threat of such if Rifkin et. al. get their way.  If there's a demand for
labeling, there will tend to be a supply.

}   "Unlike natural organisms that have evolved in step-by-step interaction 
}with the environment, genetically altered foodstuffs are a bolt from the 
}blue. Most will be harmless. but as we rush to large-scale release of more 
}and more novel organisms, the risk of havoc on an environment that has had 
}no time to adapt, multiplies."

This is awfully presumptuous!  What about the theory of punctuated
evolution?  This is but one of several competing theories of evoution.  Have
there been no mutations in the past?  Have there been no "quantum leaps" in
genetic makeup in the past?  I'd like very much to know where this has been
proven!

}   Barely two weeks after the EPA reassured consumers that apples treated 
}with the preservative daminozide (Alar) were safe, the Consumers Union 
}(Consumers Report) reported that tests on samples of apple and apple 
}products sold in the New York area contained unacceptable levels of Alar: 
}"Though there is no strong evidence that Alar itself is carcinogenic, when 
}apples are heat-processed to make commercial apple juice, part of the 
}daminozide breaks down to form the carcinogen UDMH, which may pose a cancer 
}risk to children who consume large amounts of apple juice." 

The studies which Nader commissioned to allege that Alar was unsafe didn't
even make it past peer review.  They were fabricated, another episode of
apocalyptic press-release pseudoscience.  Furthermore, this devastated the
Chilean economy as well a that of the Apple-growing northeast USA, whose
crops became worthless as consumers were frightened away by a liar and
gullible celebrities like Meryl Streep.  Chileans marched in the streets
in protest, and consumers were unable to get products like Cranapple for
quite a while, at least at the same prices and in the same quantities.

To cite the Alar scare after alleging that the consensus in favor of biotech
is caused by conflict of interest is pure hypocrisy or criminally negligent
ignorance, take your pick!

Look, I'm a layman in biology, and even I can find such serious flaws.  This
doesn't bode well for the scientific veracity of the rest of the claims quoted.


Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! - Think Universally, Act Selfishly
starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu

"True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten
oneself and others." - Voltaire