Food Irradiation Essay -- essays research papers

Food Irradiation: Solution to Hunger or Killer Mutagen? People all over the world are starving for fresh, uncontaminated food. Insects, pests, and invisible microorganisms are not what the public want to find on their dinner plates. Throughout history, life has depended on ways of treating food to reduce or destroy these naturally occurring harmful contaminants and to enable foods to be stored after harvesting so that they can be saved for use at other times of the year. With increasing populations and the growth of cities, it is even more important to be able to preserve food so that it can be transported over considerable distances and stored for long periods before it reaches the consumer. The relentless pressure to supply safe foods to mass markets has led to major contamination problems arising in recent years. The food industry has responded by developing new methods to treat food, such as food irradiation. To some in the food industry, irradiation is a wonderful new technology that could solve many contamination problems without any apparent effects on the treated food. To the consumer, it is a new process that has unknown threats and benefits. Currently, 37 countries, including the United States, permit the use of irradiation and approximately 25 actually use it. Irradiation will remain an expensive and little used technology until there is general acceptance of irradiated foods by consumers. The modern food industry has to make certain choices as to how and when it treats food during the food production cycle. It can start by reducing the level of microorganisms and pests in food by using chemical treatments and pesticides during growth. For this to be effective the food must then be protected against fresh contamination during transport and storage. An alternative approach is to do very little to the food as grown and harvested, but to treat it nearer to the point of consumption. This is common with herbs and spices. The food industry will tend to choose the way it deals with contamination based on the economics of each case, in other words, the cheapest way possible. Even where food is produced relatively close to the point of consumption, it may have to be treated because contamination is inherent in the production process. This is why milk has to be pasteurized. Pasteurization is the most effective way of killing microorganisms with m... ...where the greed of people like Gustavus Swift turned meat-packing plants into death traps and sold ground cardboard, rats, and fingers to the public as ‘fresh meat’ while sweeping the floors of the plant to recover the sliced-off bits and package them as potted meat. Clearly the food industry is driven by capitalism, and not by concern for the consumer, and although I am wholeheartedly in favor of capitalist businesses, I do think federal regulation needs to come into play not just in the United states, but in other countries where most of the people have no legal recourse at all if they fall ill or die as the result of unclean food. Education of the consumer is the key to this problem, as is objective research. Governments around the world should be made to adhere to guidelines recommended by people whose main concern is the safe and healthy production of food, instead of the cheapest way to produce it, or what would be best for the businesses already irradiating fo od, as is the case for the federal government. Without measures taken during all aspect of food production to ensure cleanliness, the consumer is doomed to a lifetime of choices between dirty food, and dirtier food.