Approval of Irradiated Meat for National School Lunch Program Is Wrong Decision

May 31, 2003

Public Citizen Press Office <pcpress

Thu, 29 May 2003 17:42:04 -0400

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May 29, 2003

Approval of Irradiated Meat for National School Lunch Program

Is Wrong Decision

Statement by Wenonah Hauter, Director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass

Energy and Environment Program

Despite thousands of comments to the federal government from parents,

teachers and children nationwide opposing irradiated meat in the

National School Lunch Program (91 percent of those commenting were

against it), the government today ignored the will of its constituents

and approved the use of irradiation for the federal nutrition program.

By offering schools the option of purchasing irradiated meat for school

lunches, which feed 27 million children each year, the U.S. Department

of Agriculture (USDA) could become the largest distributor of irradiated

food in the world.

Beginning in January 2004, children who participate in the federal

program will become guinea pigs in a government experiment that has

neglected parental concerns and disregarded numerous studies that show

the potentially harmful health effects of eating irradiated food. This

horrendous decision benefits the meat industry at the expense of

society's most vulnerable citizens - our children. Approving irradiated

meat for school cafeterias nationwide means the USDA is willing to put

our children's health at risk to help cover up the meat industry's

sanitation failures. Prioritizing industry's influence over the safety

of those it feeds is not just a bad decision - it is an error in moral

judgment.

Because federal law does not require labeling of irradiated food served

in schools, restaurants, hospitals and similar venues, irradiated meat

served in school cafeterias need not be labeled. This makes it

impossible for parents to know what school cafeterias are feeding their

children and is a blatant violation of parents' right to know.

More importantly, the children most likely to eat food purchased

through the school lunch program are from lower-income families who

cannot afford to send their children to school with homemade lunches.

These children must depend on food provided by government nutrition

programs. If irradiated meat ends up on their lunch trays at schools,

they don't have the option of refusing it.

Irradiation is not an acceptable antidote for food safety problems.

From strengthening government meat inspection to addressing the

appalling disrepair in many school cafeterias, there is much that should

be done to improve the safety of food served to our nation's children at

school. But using the purchasing power of the federal government to

bail out a struggling industry and serving this questionable product to

children have no place in a sensible food safety plan.

To read Public Citizen's comments to the USDA on irradiated food school

lunch program, please go to

http://www.citizen.org/documents/schoollunchprogramcomments.pdf. To

read a fact sheet on irradiation, please go to

http://www.citizen.org/documents/opposeradfood.pdf.

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June 1, 2003

Thank you Jan for this post!

I was reading another similar article where instead of using the word

" irradiated " meat, the spin doctors called it " sanitized " !! Yes, sanitized of

all possible nutrition! And who knows what else that process does to food...

Let's not make our kids our guinea pigs...

Be Well,

Misty

http://www..com

" Jan Jenson <vizual " <vizual wrote: