U.S. MEAT: IT'S IRRADILICIOUS!

Cowboy hat By Jim Hightower - Mon., 5/1/00

The US Department of Agriculture has gone ahead and ruled that the giant meat packers can start irradiating the raw beef, pork and lamb they sell to us (see The Lowdown, April 1999.) That's right USDA's given the green light to zap our burgers with heavy doses of x-rays from radioactive cobalt-60. Each package of meat will get hit with the equivalent of 70 million (that's right 70 mil- lion) x-rays that you'd get in a doctor's office.

It doesn't make the meat radioactive, but it does nuke the nutritional value, alter the taste, kill the beneficial bacteria, and create new chemicals in the meat that might be cancer-causing. It also raises prices by about a nickel a pound. And worst of all, there have been no studies on- the this will have on us. We're the guinea pigs.

USDA and the industry say irradiating meat is nec- essary to protect us from deadly bacteria. But what they don't say is that bac- terial contamination is the direct result of the sloppy practices and filthy facili- ties of the meat packers themselves.

If the industry would clean up its own act there would be no need to make the problem worse with irradiation. To fight this insanity, call Public Citizen: 202- 546-4996.