It is outrageous that a New York opposition group, Food and Water Inc., threatens to boycott Florida produce, and major grocery chains are intimidated into announcing that they won't stock irradiated food. Irradiated food is perfectly safe. What's unsafe for intelligent public discourse is the scientific illiteracy behind this scare campaign against it. The Tampa food irradiator, Vindicator Inc., has demonstrated that it can operate its plant safely. The Department of health and Rehabilitative Services therefore rightly issued it an operating license on Tuesday.
State law requires irradiated food to be identified.
Those who distrust the world's scientific establishment will no doubt consider such identification to be a warning. Those who have come to prefer pasteurizated milk will recognize the international symbol as attesting that irradiated food is safe as well as good to eat. SAFE FOOD NEWS Chief of FDA Review Says Safety of Irradiated Food Not Proven. She also noted that the diets of the animals were nutritionally imbalanced, making the effects from the radiolytic products difficult to ascertain. The studies reviewed in the 1982 memo from FDA were not adequate by the 1992 standards, and are even less adequate by the 1993 standards to evaluate the safety of any product, especially a food product such as irradiated foods.