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By
Julie Schmit, Don't expect
to find irradiated spinach and lettuce in your supermarket any time soon,
even though federal regulators have given the food industry permission to
sell it. Several
hurdles will discourage immediate widespread adoption, including cost, lack
of irradiation facilities, concerns about how well it will work and whether
consumers will buy produce that's been irradiated to kill dangerous bugs such
as E. coli. "Right
now, it's not cost-effective," says David Gombas,
senior vice president of the United Fresh Produce Association. "It'll
take time and money to make it practical." The
Food and Drug Administration last week started allowing foodmakers
to irradiate iceberg lettuce and spinach, saying data showed no harm to
consumers or the products' nutritional values. The leafy greens join a dozen
other foods that can be irradiated to kill pathogens, including meat,
poultry, spices and some shellfish. But
most FIND MORE
STORIES IN: Florida
| Pennsylvania
| Iowa
| Food and Drug
Administration | Sioux City
| Richard Hunter
| United Fresh
Produce Association | Topps Meat
| Bruce Taylor
| Omaha Steaks
| MDS Nordion | Wiens Foodmakers could build irradiation facilities. But they'd cost
millions of dollars — a big bet for a technology that's been largely shunned
by consumers. "You'll
see gradual adoption and early adopters … who convince others to try,"
says Richard Hunter, CEO of Food Technology Service, a 13-employee
food-irradiation company in Historically,
high radiation doses used to kill all bacteria on fruits or vegetables have
produced unpalatable products, researchers say. But
testing by the U.S. Department of Agriculture has shown that treating spinach
and lettuce with relatively low radiation kills 99.9% to 99.99% of E. coli
and is slightly less successful against salmonella, says Brendan Niemira, a researcher at the Microbial Food Safety
Research Unit of the USDA-ARS Eastern Regional Research Center in
Pennsylvania. Chlorine
washes, used by bagged-salad makers to clean produce and prevent the spread
of bacteria inside processing plants, typically get 90% to 99% of the
bacteria, studies have shown. Irradiation
— which destroys bacteria with intense pulses of energy that disrupt its DNA
— also kills bacteria that may be inside leaves, where chlorine washes aren't
effective, Niemira says. But
he says the greens have also shown some softening when irradiated at doses of
1.5 Kilogray, or kGy,
which is how radiation doses are measured. Finding
the right dose to kill bacteria but maintain crispness will be crucial,
Hunter says. "It'll take processors awhile for them to develop their
product and process," he says. Effect of 2006 recall Foodmakers have tested irradiation for years. Interest picked up
after the 2006 E. coli outbreak in fresh spinach that killed five and
sickened more than 200, says Harlan Clemmons, president of Sadex in The
six-employee company irradiates feed ingredients, ground beef, spices, pet
treats and some poultry. It occupies a plant built by SureBeam,
formerly a leading food-irradiation firm that filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy
in 2004. Sadex has helped companies test vegetables, including spinach,
lettuce, mushrooms and bell peppers. Clemmons says E. coli and salmonella
have been reduced by at least 99.9% with doses ranging from 1 kGy to 2 kGy without harming
produce. "It's crunchy, not melted or wilted," he says. To
demonstrate his conviction, Clemmons has even eaten spinach contaminated with
E. coli after he irradiated it but before it was tested for decontamination. "I'm
confident in what we do," he says. Richard
Wiens, whose company MDS Nordion
sells irradiation equipment, says the cost of irradiating leafy greens will
add "pennies a pound." "It's
going to be a question of food processors understanding that this will be a
cheap form of insurance," against a food-borne-illness outbreak that
could put them out of business, as happened last year with Topps Meat, Wiens says. Others
say more testing is needed. "You have this tease of a technology, but we
don't know enough about it," says Bruce Taylor, CEO of Taylor Farms,
which makes bagged salads. He says irradiation research for Foodmakers may also get more enthused if the FDA allows them to use
words other than "irradiated" on food labels, as it proposed last
year. Meanwhile,
the meat industry hasn't provided a good example, even though some companies
say they've succeeded with irradiated ground beef. The
USDA approved irradiation for red meat in 2000. But only a handful of
companies irradiate ground beef — the most likely beef carrier of E. coli —
including Omaha Steaks. Wegmans irradiates some
ground beef sold under its private label. Clemmons
says leafy green processors may adopt the technology more quickly because
meat has a bacteria "kill" step in proper cooking. Fresh produce is
eaten raw and has no kill step. Ground
beef sales have doubled at Omaha Steaks since it began irradiating in 2000,
spokeswoman Beth Weiss says. It now ships frozen beef to Food Technology
Service to be irradiated but is considering building its own facility. "It's
an added level of food-safety protection," Weiss says. When
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IRRADIATED
FOOD
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