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by Judy Cross
Voltaire once said, "He who believes absurdities, commits atrocities."
The absurdity that we would not suffer harm from eating nuked food
has just been laid to rest by the European Parliament. They voted
against extending the list of foods that can be exposed to ionizing
radiation in order to extend shelf life and kill pathogens.
Meanwhile, our federal government is planning on allowing the irradiation of fresh or frozen ground beef, poultry, shrimp and mangoes. Health Canada has decided that since no long term feeding studies have been done, it can’t be said that food irradiation is dangerous. Well, that is because the animals in the early feeding experiments showed such horrendous problems that they stopped doing the tests the same way. The fact that the World Health Organization said it was just fine back in 1986 is good enough for Health Canada.
What’s more, all the short term published human feeding studies have also shown problems. But Health Canada maintains that since they don’t know what the changes mean, they can be ignored.
Work done in 2002 by the International Consultative Group on Food Irradiation (ICGFI), under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and funded by the German government, proves that eating irradiated food would certainly increase the incidence of colon cancer, since three of the URPs tested showed their capability of either causing cancer or promoting tumour growth. (See www.citizen.org/documents/williamauaffidavit.pdf)
That’s the biggest stop sign yet. The ICGFI’s work cannot be dismissed with a "the dose makes the poison" argument because it was shown that a portion of the URPs are stored in body fat.
The biggest problem with Health Canada’s stance is that irradiations’ impact on food contravenes Part 1 sections 4 and 5 of the Food Act. That fact is, it can be and has been used to clean up rotting fish and shrimp since the 1980s. The mind-blowing fact is that whatever the proponents claim can be done by exposing food to the equivalent of 600,000 chest x-rays, can be done far more safely and much cheaper by any number of present day technologies, with new ones coming along all the time. If it weren’t government-supported it would have disappeared 40 years ago instead of having millions spent trying to prove its safety.
So why is our government planning to legalize food irradiation and then "educate" consumers? Heavy pressure from the U.S. to conform to their standard which will soon allow any and all foods to be irradiated. If Canada does not conform, the U.S. might start a trade action against us. As to why the U.S. is so gung-ho for nukefood, they want to start up weapons testing again. Plans are to privatize Cesium-137 production to be used to zap food with the hope that it will be shipped all over the globe. We do not want more in the food chain!
Stop it Now or Eat it Later
Let Health Canada know that we will not allow them to jeopardize either our health or the ecosystem to further the aims of the military industrial complex.
Submit your objections by February 21, 2002. Since this is a legal process, you must cite:
Canada Gazette Part 1, November 23, 2002 , Regulations Amending the Food and Drug Regulations (1094-Food Irradiation.) The address must also be exact or they will disappear it.
Mr. Ronald Burke, Director
Bureau of Food Regulatory
International & Interagency Affairs
Department of Health
Room 2395, Address Locator 0702C1
Health Protection Building, Tunney’s Pasture
Ottawa, Ontario, K1A0L2
As a volunteer and member of the Health Action Network Society, (604) 435 0512, I’m ready to help with submissions.
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