July 8, 2003 -- Irradiated meat is pretty darn safe. But it's n
July 8, 2003 -- Irradiated meat is pretty darn safe. But it's not as safe -- or as tasty -- as often claimed, a consumer group reports.
Supermarket flyers claim irradiation kills any germs that might lurk in food. They also claim you can't taste the difference between irradiated and non-irradiated meat. Neither claim is true, according to a report in the August issue of Consumer Reports.
"There's no thumbs up or thumbs down in our report. We just tried to lay out, impartially, what we found," CR managing editor Kim Kleman tells WebMD.
"We found in testing more than 500 packs of irradiated meat and chicken is that in some cases it is being hyped in a way that just isn't true. Irradiation will not take care of all your contamination problems. It is not the silver bullet for food-borne illness."
Taste Test
And then there's the taste issue. Experienced taste testers said they could easily tell irradiated from nonirradiated meat by a slight -- but telltale -- burned flavor and singed hair smell. Kleman says she isn't a trained taster. She didn't notice the off taste right away, she concedes.
"To be totally fair, the taste is subtle," Kleman says. "It took me one or two samples to hone in on it. But once you know it, you can tell every time. There is an electrical taste. If your host served it to you, you wouldn't spit it out in front of everybody, but it's there."
CR's specially trained shoppers went to grocery stores in 60 cities in eight U.S. states. They bought irradiated ground beef and nonirradiated beef of similar leanness. They bought irradiated and nonirradiated frozen chicken tenders. And they bought irradiated and nonirradiated frozen hamburger patties.
The laboratory of Consumers Union -- the publisher of Consumer Reports -- tested each sample for germs. And their panel of experienced taste-testers sampled each type of meat.
The verdict:
- Irradiated meats had 90%-99% fewer germs -- bacteria -- than nonirradiated meats.
- Contrary to some claims, irradiated meats still have some germs. That means they have to be handled and cooked every bit as carefully as nonirradiated meats.
- In 66 out of 72 pairs of irradiated and nonirradiated meats, the taste testers picked out the irradiated meat. They described it as "having a slightly scorched taste and smell reminiscent of singed hair."
A 2001 CDC study calculated that if half of all the ground beef, pork, poultry, and processed meat in the U.S. were irradiated, it would prevent 6% of all food-borne illnesses each year. That's 350 lives saved and 6,000 grave illnesses avoided. On the other hand, the CDC says that much more illness -- 20% of food-borne disease outbreaks -- is caused by poor hygiene among commercial food preparers.
For Irradiation
Because of this, Consumers Union says there's no real benefit to irradiated meats. That draws fire from Christine M. Bruhn, PhD, director of the Center for Consumer Research at the University of California, Davis. Bruhn's work is supported by the USDA; she disavows support from the irradiation industry.
"Irradiation can save lots of lives. It can save people from illness, from hospitalization," Bruhn tells WebMD. "What discouraged me about the Consumer Reports article was they apparently ignored that information. They say they see no advantage to consumers, and that is ignoring the facts."
