FDA Seeks to Remove Labeling Requirements for Irradiated Foods

[Guest guest]

FDA SEEKS TO REMOVE LABELING REQUIREMENTS FOR IRRADIATED FOODS

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed new federal regulations that

will allow manufacturers and retailers to sell controversial irradiated foods

without labeling them, as previously required by law. Consumers are justifiably

wary of foods bombarded with nuclear waste or powerful x-rays or gamma

rays--since irradiation destroys essential vitamins and nutrients, creates

unique radiolytic chemical compounds never before consumed by humans, and

generates carcinogenic byproducts such as formaldehyde and benzene. Although

irradiation, except for spices, is banned in much of the world, and prohibited

globally in organic production, U.S. corporate agribusiness and the meat

industry desperately want to be able to secretly " nuke " foods in order to reduce

the deadly bacterial contamination that is now routine in industrial agriculture

and meat production. OCA and other public interest groups have repeatedly

pointed out that the best way to reduce or eliminate America's

78 million cases of food poisoning every year would be to clean up the nation's

filthy slaughterhouses and feedlots, stop contaminated runoff from intensive

confinement feedlots from polluting adjacent farms (as in the recent spinach

e-coli outbreak), and to stop feeding animals slaughterhouse waste and manure.

Instead, FDA and corporate agribusiness have apparently decided, with the

backing of the nuclear power and weapons industry, to take away consumers'

rights to know if their food has been irradiated or not.

Learn more and take action: http://www.organicconsumers.org/rd/irrad-label.cfm