back to Organic Consumers Assn. Stop Irradiation page House Appropriations Committee strips funding for FDA research on irradiation June 20, 2001 Last week, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee considered an amendment to the current appropriations bill. The amendment would have given the FDA $500,000 to conduct research on irradiation of foods. Despite our efforts, this (Republican majority) committee voted to strip the funds. The person who proposed stripping the funds is Congressman Randy Cunningham, from San Diego, where the electron-beam irradiation company Titan is located. However, we have another chance to get these funds when the Senate creates their own version of the appropriations bill. Funding for the FDA is necessary because when the FDA approved irradiation in the 1980s, it never followed its own testing requirements. The FDA is supposed to perform (or obtain the results of) a battery of animal-feeding tests on any additive it regulates. This standard is set by the National Academy of Sciences and the FDA has agreed to follow the standard. Yet this body of science does not exist for irradiated foods. The $500,000 would have filled a giant gap in our knowledge of irradiated foods. For a very small amount of money, we would have much greater scientific certainty about the effects of a diet containing irradiated foods. Yet an irradiation company got its waterboy in Congress to block the funds. You have to ask yourself, if irradiation is so great, if it's so safe, what are they afraid of? Wouldn't they want scientific confirmation, done the right way by a nonpartisan agency, that their product is beneficial? Or maybe the well-known vitamin loss, enzyme damage and new radiolytic chemicals do have health effects after all...