Internationally
known disease expert
backs irradiation
He says mainland
By Rod Thompson
firms will send Hawaii
irradiated food
Star-BulletinHILO -- Even if Big Islanders vote not to send irradiated fruit to the mainland, people throughout Hawaii will soon be eating irradiated food from there, an internationally recognized disease expert from Minnesota predicts.
Michael Osterholm of the Minnesota Department of Health was invited to speak by Friends of Agriculture-Hawaii, a group which supports irradiation to sterilize insects in Big Island fruit so it can be shipped to the mainland.
Voters will decide in November whether to change a county ordinance to ban construction of an irradiator.
Although the purpose of an irradiator here would be to kill insects, Osterholm was more interested in killing germs.
The amount of food-borne disease in America has increased up to 80 percent in the last 50 years, Osterholm told doctors and public officials yesterday.
A quarter of all poultry carries highly infectious, drug-resistant bacteria, he said. Infected foods range from parsley to raspberries.
"Organic" foods may be more dangerous because they are fertilized with animal manure and sometimes human waste, he said.
Studies have shown that getting certain germs on tomato flowers will result in a tomato that is full of bacteria, he said.
Friends of Agriculture Chairman Richard Nelson said no one in the United States has ever died from exposure to an irradiator, but 9,000 people per year die nationally from food-borne diseases.
Doctors against irradiation are "not keeping up with general practice," Osterholm said.
As he spoke, 20 Big Island doctors opposed to irradiation (out of about 300 physicians on the island), issued a statement saying that irradiators are dangerous, that references to food-borne illnesses are meant to scare people, and that polls show most Americans won't buy irradiated food.
Osterholm said the opposite. A recent poll shows 60 percent to 80 percent of Americans want irradiated food, he said. The cost to irradiate hamburger would be about a half-cent per pound, he said.
State Department of Agriculture official Lyle Wong has monitored private shipments of Big Island fruit since 1995 to an irradiator at Morton Grove near Chicago.
He said the demand is so great that shippers have had to switch to a larger irradiator at Libertyville, near Chicago, and to start irradiating at another facility at Whippany, N.J.
