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Schools to
Be Allowed to Serve Irradiated Meat
The Associated Press, October 26, 2002
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Schools will be allowed to serve children meat that has been
sterilized through irradiation, the Agriculture Department has
decided.
Irradiation sterilizes food by using low levels of gamma rays
or electrons to kill bacteria and parasites, like E. coli and
salmonella.
In 1999, the government approved the sale of irradiated meat
to the public, but irradiated meat was prohibited in the
school lunch program. The farm bill approved in May changed
that, said Alisa Harrison, spokeswoman for the Agriculture
Department.
Under the new policy, announced on Friday, schools will be
allowed to buy irradiated meat by the end of the year, Ms.
Harrison said, emphasizing that doing so was optional.
The meat industry has been urging the agency to approve such a
policy, saying it will make products safer. Companies want the
department to start a pilot program for buying irradiated
ground beef for school lunches.
"It's time for U.S.D.A. to acknowledge the food safety
benefits of this technology and begin purchasing irradiated
ground beef products for the nation's schoolchildren," J.
Patrick Boyle, chief executive of the American Meat Institute,
said in a statement.
Some advocacy groups say irradiated food is unhealthy, though
the World Health Organization and the American Medical
Association have said it is safe. The consumer group Public
Citizen has strongly opposed irradiation, saying the process
destroys vitamins and nutrients and can cause chemicals linked
to cancer and birth defects to develop.
Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Consumer Federation of
America's Food Policy Institute, said she accepted that
irradiated food was safe to eat but warned that it was "not a
silver bullet" for food-borne illnesses.
Food poisoning in American schools has been increasing 10
percent a year, the General Accounting Office, the auditing
agency of Congress, reported this year. Fifty school-related
outbreaks of food poisoning were reported nationwide in 1999,
with 2,900 illnesses.
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