The FDA unveiled Friday in the Federal Register a regulation legalizing the irradiation of eggs, effective immediately. In response, Public Citizen is asking the FDA both to delay implementing the new regulation and to hold a public hearing on it. Irradiated eggs also can disrupt the interaction between proteins and enzymes that are essential for proper blood flow, digestion and other biological functions, studies show. Karen Davis, president of United Poultry Concerns , an agricultural practices accountability group based in Machipongo, Va., also denounced the FDA's decision. Once again, we have a concession by our government, in collusion with the agriculture industry, to ignore husbandry and embrace technological interventions that are being used to dazzle the public as a substitute for cleaning up filthy environments.
Food irradiation carries numerous side effects.
The process destroys nutrients, spawns free radicals that make the body more susceptible to cancer and diabetes, masks filthy slaughterhouse practices, and forms carcinogens such as benzene and formaldehyde. In 50 years of research conducted worldwide, lab animals fed irradiated food have suffered premature death, cancer, reproductive and immune problems, liver and kidney dysfunction, low birth weight, nutritional muscular dystrophy, chromosomal damage and other serious problems. The request to irradiate eggs was made by Edward Josephson, who during the 1960s and 1970s oversaw the U.S. Army's food irradiation headquarters in Massachusetts, where dozens of studies revealed serious health problems in lab animals that ate irradiated food, including premature death and cancer. Currently, Josephson's research is being underwritten by MDS Nordion, an Ottawa-based company with links to a Canadian government agency responsible for the proliferation of nuclear technology to China, India and Pakistan.