FDA has acknowledged that many consumers believe irradiated foods are radioactive or otherwise unsafe. The disclosure requirement plays to and implicitly supports the public misapprehension about the safety of irradiated foods. NFPA's arguments were supported by information from consumer research that NFPA conducted and co-sponsored in 1998 and 1999. Few consumers express willingness to purchase foods with such a label statement.
Many consumers articulate apprehension about the safety connotations of such terminology.
NFPA also believes consumers would be well served by label statements which describe the beneficial effects of food irradiation. NFPA believes that consumers would not be misled by the absence of an irradiation disclosure statement, just as they are not misled at present by the absence of label information about food processing treatments in general. For example, foods that are processed by a thermal process, and are sold refrigerated, do not mislead consumers regarding their nature, even though descriptions of the processing treatments are not required and generally are not disclosed. Thus, FDA's required radiation statement discourages the use of a process that can mitigate, if not eliminate, very real safety hazards.