The American Meat Institute, the National Livestock and Meat Board, and the National Food Processors Association have all made statements supporting the use of irradiation as part of a solution to combat the growing problem of meat borne illness. Their approbation has been echoed by appropriate U.S. government agencies. Regulations permitting poultry irradiation to control foodborne pathogens were approved by the FDA in 1990 and the FSIS in 1992. In December 1997, the FDA amended their regulations to allow the irradiation of beef and other red meats. After a thorough scientific review of a substantial number of studies conducted worldwide on the effects of irradiation on a wide variety of meat products, the US Department of Agriculture concluded in February 1999 that irradiation is safe in reducing numbers of pathogenic bacteria on meats and that is does not compromise the nutritional quality of the treated products.
Irradiation causes some minor changes in food, all of which have been found to be benign.
More than 40 years of comprehensive multispecies, multigeneration animal studies have shown no toxic effects from eating irradiated foods. Irradiation produces so little chemical change in food that it is difficult to design a test to determine if a food has been irradiated. A small number of new compounds are formed when food is irradiated, just as when it is exposed to heat. Free radicals and other compounds produced during irradiation are identical to those formed during cooking, steaming, roasting, pasteurization, freezing and other forms of food preparation. Thus, the effect of irradiation on the quality of meats should not be any greater than that of cooking or more traditional preservation methods such as freezing or canning.