The Question of Irradiated Beef in Lunchrooms January 29, 2003 corrected February 5, 2003 By MARIAN BURROS I RRADIATED beef may be coming soon to your local school cafeteria. The farm bill that was passed last May directs the Agriculture Department to buy irradiated beef for the federal school lunch program. It will be up to local school districts to decide if they want it. Americans have been reluctant to buy food that is irradiated, a process that uses electrons or gamma rays to kill harmful bacteria like salmonella and E. coli 0157:H7, which cause food poisoning. Some people fear, wrongly, that the food is radioactive. Others are concerned that the process hasn't been tested well. They may be correct. (emphasis added) Based on European studies showing the formation of cancer-causing properties in irradiated fat, the European Union, which allows irradiation only for certain spices and dried herbs, has voted not to permit any further food irradiation until more studies have been done. Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, said: "There is nowhere in the world where a large population has eaten large amounts of irradiated food over a long period of time. It makes me queasy that we are going to feed it to schoolchildren." Advocates of meat irradiation have been struggling for public acceptance; some irradiated meat is being sold. But some within the food industry criticize the tactics being used to gain acceptance for food irradiation. Diane Toops, the news and trend editor of Food Processing, a trade magazine, said in this column in 2001: "The irradiation business is making all of the same mistakes biotechnology has made, trying to force their new technology down the throats of consumers who have a lot of questions." Because the word irradiation conjures up radioactivity and, more recently, the method by which anthrax spores have been killed, the industry has tried to keep it off food packaging. It is lobbying to use a word with which people are more comfortable: pasteurized. A farm bill provision, added by Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat, directs the Food and Drug Administration to look for a less fear-inducing word. Senator Harkin, a longtime proponent of food safety, is also responsible for the language in the bill that directs the Agriculture Department to buy irradiated meat. The same month the farm bill passed, according to the Federal Election Commission in 2002, Senator Harkin received a $5,000 campaign contribution from the Titan Corporation, which until last August owned the SureBeam Corporation of Sioux City, Iowa, the country's largest food irradiator. Tricia Enright, Mr. Harkin's spokeswoman, said: "Tom Harkin's record as a leader of food safety is unparalleled. His commitment to this technology goes back decades." The Harkin provision has given the Bush administration what it asked for in 2001: irradiated beef in the school lunch program, in place of testing for bacterial contamination. School lunches fall under the jurisdiction of Dr. Peter S. Murano, deputy administrator of the Food and Nutrition Service. He and his wife, Dr. Elsa Murano, the Agriculture Department's under secretary for food safety, are known for their writings on the use of irradiation to improve food safety. Previously, she ran the food irradiation program at Iowa State University. To convince the public that irradiation is necessary because food poisoning has been increasing in schools, the meat industry cites a General Accounting Office study issued on April 30, 2002, that maintains that such outbreaks are rising at the rate of 10 percent a year. But Dr. Robert Tauxe, chief of the foodborne and diarrheal diseases branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said, "The percent of outbreaks in schools hasn't changed in the last 10 years." The statistical change, he said, is due to better reporting. Although the Agriculture Department is authorized to offer irradiated meat to schools, the secretary of agriculture, Ann M. Veneman, is moving slowly. According to the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit Washington advocacy group, which opposes irradiation of food, of more than 1,500 comments the Agriculture Department received from the public on the subject, two-thirds were against it. "I don't think the right place to start this is in the school lunch program," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "There is not enough public acceptance. It's essential parents be allowed to sign off before irradiated meat is allowed. If kids don't have the right to refuse and it's not labeled, it's really taking consumer choice away." The American School Food Service Association, a trade group, states that irradiation will make beef safer and save money, because salmonella testing will no longer be necessary. That idea angers people like Ms. DeWaal, who said, "Irradiation is not a substitute for testing." Barry Sackin, a lobbyist for the food service association, said that school districts will have the right to refuse irradiated meat, and when it is used, it will have to be labeled. "The last thing we need is a reporter who puts out a story that kids are served irradiated meat and parents didn't know," he said.