Yikes! Yet another reason to eat local
Foods labeled “pasteurized” in the grocery store may have actually been irradiated thanks to the FDA changing the rules.
How Much of Your Food is Being Nuked Before it Hits the Shelf?
By Brita Belli, E Magazine. Posted July 5, 2007.
India alone grows 1,000 varieties of mangoes in such delectable variations as the sweet, orange-skinned Alphonso, the Bombay Green and the Bangalora. Here in the U.S., we rarely see more than one lonely variety at the local supermarket, but that’s all about to change. Soon consumers will be able to sample the sweet and tart nectars of many more imported fruits and vegetables from Thailand, India and Mexico piled high in the produce section. But there’s a catch: this fruit will arrive irradiated.
Shoppers may not be the wiser. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules in place since 1986 have required the radura — a symbol for irradiation that resembles a flower in a broken circle — on placards in front of produce displays or on packaged food like ground beef, along with the statement: “treated with radiation” or “treated by irradiation.”
But last April, the FDA proposed a revision to those rules. Food which had undergone irradiation, but not “material change,” would no longer have to bear the radura logo and companies could replace the word “irradiation” with the more consumer-friendly “pasteurized” or something else innocuous. Public comment on the current proposed change closes in early July.
Read the rest of the article at alternet.
How does this make you feel?
irradiated foods, FDA, eat local
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