I thought about calling this "Vegetables of Mass Destruction--purloined edition" but figured I wouldn't come close to meeting the high standards set by the author of that brilliant series. However, I couldn't keep from a little mini-rant about a likely minor threat to our food supply, but an extremely serious threat to our intelligence. And a request to all Kossacks who may be interested in submitting comments to the FDA, to please please do so.
Orwell is chuckling again. In fact, he is probably rubbing little bone-dry fingers together with glee and cackling. Why? Just a little bit more of inaccuracy, one might almost say lying, in labelling and communicating to the american sheepulace.
The newest disgrace comes to you courtesy of the US FDA, which is giving a day's notice of a proposed rule to deliberately mislabel food. More below the indigestion....
FDA is planning to allow irradiated foods to either be unlabelled or called "pasteurized," unless (in someone's judgment, not specified whose), there is some change to the taste, texture or nutritional quality of the food. "Pasteurized" may be used instead of "irradiated," if the product can be shown to be effectively as microbe free as if it had been pasteurized. Any foods that had taste texture etc. changed would still have to show the little 'radula' and be called irradiated. But its really not clear who would make or enforce that call.
Now this may seem innocuous to some of us. From a scientific viewpoint, I very much doubt that any of us would suffer extreme harm from irradiated foodstuffs. (I know, I'm swimming against the food purity police here, but based on what I've seen of studies of irradiated food, I don't think there are huge health risks, except from having more sources of radiation available for accidental contamination at the food processing sites.) But I am a strong believer that we should have accurate information to make the choice for ourselves. It's bad enough to say that irradiated foods (and dietary supplements) would be allowed on the market without labelling. But it really gores my butt to see that irradiated food would be allowed to be labelled as "pasteurized," which is a completely different process with different consequences to the food and assurances to the consumer.
The grocery manufacter's representative says this is needed because identifying food as irradiated leads to product deselection. I say, so what! If the American consumer wants to select irradiated foods, and get cheaper foods that are less likely contaminated by bacteria they will. If the consumer prefers to not eat irradiated foods the consumer should have that choice, and not be deliberately mis-led, courtesy of our government.
This action is described in the Federal Register Notice
http://www.fda.gov/...
Please, if you don't like this proposed action, take the time to drop a line to FDA (polite if possible) specifying why. We do not need the government supporting inaccurate and misleading labelling, and we don't need our intelligence insulted.