> Environmental and Health Concerns > Irradiated Foods

Why should Canadians trust Health Canada on the issue of food irradiation, which involves exposing food products to ionizing radiation in order to kill food-borne pathogens?

This is the same Health Canada that allowed the blood supply to become tainted with HIV and hepatitis C viruses. Tens of thousands of innocent victims affected by this tragedy have been denied compensation because of Health Canada’s criminal negligence.

This is the same Health Canada that warns on its Web site about the dangers of exposure to dangerous amounts of mercury from fish but defends the use of mercury (thimerosal) in vaccines. In the 1920s, vaccine manufacturer Eli Lilly knew and suppressed that mercury would have adverse neurological effects. Infants and children are the most vulnerable, and by the time a child reaches grade school, that child receives a total of 187.5 micrograms of mercury. Yet Health Canada does nothing about removing mercury from all vaccines.

This is the same Health Canada that permitted Department of National Defence medical doctors to shoot up Canadian military personnel with an anthrax vaccine that health officials knew had expired and was contaminated with filth. In spite of protests and inquiries to the Minister of Health, the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Justice–with copies to all members of Parliament–no one has yet been called to account in the Department of National Defence or in Health Canada for activity that is a criminal violation of Health Canada’s very own Food and Drugs Act.

Health Canada is promoting food irradiation ostensibly in the interest of consumer protection. But what is inescapable is that food irradiation only serves the majority of meat industry members who put profits before emphasizing sanitary manufacturing conditions–an industry that puts profits before better wages for their workers. An industry that puts profits before worker toilet breaks so that we now have to contend with contamination from human waste.

What with poultry and meat travelling on conveyor belts faster than inspectors can properly examine and workers can properly handle, is it any wonder there is an epidemic of food poisoning? There also is the question of diseased meat riddled with cysts, tumours or infection, or damaged due to injury prior to slaughter. One vision-impaired elderly couple reported to me they had purchased chicken from a reputable grocer only to discover–thanks to their alert son–that the chicken had a cyst that was full of hot gas and fluids and would have blown up when cut into with a knife.

In fact, that was the experience of a physician, his wife and their guests when cutting into a roast beef fresh from the oven. It exploded when the doctor cut into a cyst with a carving knife. The doc’s wife later commented she had another roast in the freezer and was not too anxious to cook it.

Irradiating bacteria as a so-called sterilization process is a joke. Bacteria are known to be able to become radiation resistant. Radiation is known to cause mutations. What about mutation into more and virulent strains of these bugs? As part of “Gullible’s Travels,” Health Canada proposes to use the term “cold pasteurization” as a euphemism for food irradiation. Even if irradiation worked–so far the evidence the industry and government refuses to look at says it won’t–irradiated fecal matter is still fecal matter. Let the politicians and bureaucrats eat it. I’m vegetarian.

Former president of the Canadian Health Food Association, Croft Woodruff is a vitamin retailer in Vancouver and health activist for EDTA chelation therapy. Phone: 604-324-2121.

Source: alive #248, June 2003