The issue of food irradiation and the consumer has to be considered at several different levels and in different contexts.
Irradiation can make contaminated food safer by killing harmful micro organisms.
However, radiation also changes the structure of food, and of some of its constituents, in subtle ways and these might introduce new hazards. Since 1961 exhaustive studies have been carried out on the safety of irradiated food. A report commissioned by the Australian Government in 1992 again concluded that irradiated food is acceptably safe. Consumer experts are dissatisfied with these conclusions and argue that the reviews have ignored key experiments and the risk assessment methods are suspect. Although there is certainly no hard evidence that irradiation at the dosage levels recommended results in dangerous or harmful effects, very few of the studies have been done for any length of time on human subjects.